

EQUINOX:

Six Declinations

by

Richard Freeland

Smashwords v. 2 EDITION

PUBLISHED BY:

DragonLyre Publishing on Smashwords

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in any form, in whole or in part, without written permission from the publisher.

Equinox:

Six Declinations

Copyright © 2010 by Richard Freeland

Smashwords v. 2 Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

For my Dad, John Jackson Freeland, who taught me to love books.

Table of Contents

Equinox

Family Tradition

Anomalies

The Last Angel

Garbage Man

Bygones

Equinox

Kate Buchanan settled with a sigh into the plush leather seat of Andy Nations' unmarked Ford Bronco. Welcome warmth enveloped her, dispelling a chill only partially caused by the short run from her front door through winter to the SUV. She clutched a large Snoopy mug of scalding coffee with both hands and now she took a sip, willing rigid muscles to relax. As Nations eased away from the curb, she asked without looking at him, "What do we have?"

She felt his eyes on her, questioning, but forced herself to stare straight ahead, through her sunglasses and the dirty windshield, into the lightening Gainesville morning.

"Hospital call," he said. His voice was deep and rich, with a flavor of New Orleans. "Female. Early forties. Disoriented, disheveled. Lost." He hesitated. "Possible rape."

She looked at him then, quick, searching. "One of them?"

"Maybe. From what I understand, no sign that force was used. No trauma. No bruising." He glanced away from the road, gave her a long look. "Take off the shades, Kate."

She looked out the window. Ice lay everywhere. The late winter storm the experts predicted would blast through Tennessee and the North Georgia mountains had dropped further south for a surprise visit. Trees glittered and slumped under a sheath of heavy ice. Power lines sagged. Automobiles, cloaked in ice mantles, resembled bergs calved by a glacier. A raw wind buffeted the car, whirling frozen granules across the windshield.

And more scheduled to come tonight, she thought. She wrapped herself around the coffee mug, hunched deeper into her coat. Shivered. She couldn't seem to get warm.

"This is supposed to be the South," she muttered.

"Did he hit you again, Kate?"

"Andy..."

"Did he?"

She sipped her coffee, already going lukewarm. Said nothing.

"Damn it, Kate. You don't have to stand for this. You're a cop, for chris'sake. Bust his ass."

She hesitated. "Mike didn't mean it. This senate campaign's stressed him out."

"The sorry son-of-a-bitch. You want me to do it? Take his pimply ass down? Any man would hit a woman...no good, cock-suckin', fancy pants mothafucka!"

She stared at him. His nut-brown, moon face was contorted in fury. Huge, blocky hands squeezed the steering wheel, twisting, as if it were a chicken whose neck he'd like to wring. His anger scared her, pissed her off...and, oddly, touched her deeply. She felt tears well, fought them off.

"It's all right," she said softly. Then, more firmly, "Really. I can handle him."

"You're a good cop, Buchanan," he said after a while. "I've seen you walk into situations I'd have hesitated to tackle when I was a Ranger. But where he's concerned, you're a pushover."

"And you're a goddamn busybody."

"Dumb bitch."

"Worry wart."

"Ditzy female."

She smiled faintly. "Panty-waist."

He looked at her. His thick lips twitched. "Panty-waist?"

She laughed, then faced eyes-front once again. Nations pulled carefully onto the freeway on-ramp, sliding a bit on a patch of black ice, then accelerated. Kate felt somewhat better. Ahead, the hospital. And the woman. The rape victim. One more piece of a puzzle they'd worked at doggedly for months.

Nations' soft voice forced her from her reverie. "One of these days, he's gonna kill you—or you, him."

She had nothing to say to that.

* * * * *

Nation's drove to the back of the hospital and double-parked close to the utilitarian entrance to the emergency room. The asphalt drive passed between the newly constructed Cardiac Care Unit on the right, its floors stacked high like a four-layer cake, and the pile of ugly concrete that was the hospital's latest edition in their burgeoning building program – the employee parking deck. The area between the two structures was a canyon, with cliffs of concrete, steel and glass looming to either side.

Feels like a B Western movie in here, Kate thought. Her eyes flicked uneasily between the two structures. Expect an Indian ambush at any moment.

In truth, the "canyon" didn't really bother her that much. It was the emergency room that made Kate edgy. Bright, cold, smelling of antiseptic and other things not quite so clean—an environment that made her skittish, uncomfortable. And she was insightful enough to understand why.

It was because she'd spent so much of her life—both professional and —within the close confines of emergency rooms.

Broken bones. Split lips. Bruises. Lacerations.

"Accidents", she whispered under her breath. "Just accidents."

Deep in her soul, a little lost girl echoed the thought.

Accidents.

They entered the emergency room through automatic sliding glass doors, chased by the opportunistic wind. A string-bean of a man stepped up to greet them.

"Look what the cat dragged in – two half-frozen detectives!" Dr. Anson Gregor smiled warmly, the vivid blue eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses kind but wary.

"Hi, Doc," Nations drawled. They shook, Nations' huge paw swallowing Gregor's whole. "We got word you had another...special case?"

"A taxi-driver brought her in. Found her wandering along the lakeshore, wearing nothing but an old bathrobe and clutching a purse. He thought she may have had a stroke."

He led them to an examination room and swept back a gauzy curtain.

The woman dressed in a hospital gown sat on the edge of a gurney. Her shoulders were slumped, and her arms dangled listlessly at her side. A nurse gently swabbed her raw, abraded feet.

"She was barefoot when they brought her in," Dr. Gregor explained, keeping his voice low, "and those scratches on her feet are her only wounds—physical, I mean."

"Any signs of..." Nations began, but Gregor anticipated him.

"We followed procedure. Used a PERK. Performed a thorough examination. She's had recent sexual intercourse." He looked hard at Kate. "There was fluid present in the vaginal tract. No sign of forced entry, though."

"Semen?"

Gregor searched her face. "Are you going to let me in on what's going on here?"

"No," Kate said flatly. "You were saying?"

Gregor frowned. A muscle in his jaw twitched. He turned away from Kate, staring at the woman.

"It isn't semen. Has the consistency of K.Y. Jelly, but—no sperm. No D.N.A." He grinned without humor. "How you guy's going to identify him without a signature?"

Kate waited patiently. Finally, Gregor sighed. "We saved some for the crime lab boys, but I did my own analysis. Looks to be the same as the samples taken from those earlier cases. Chlorine, sodium, magnesium. Sulfur, calcium and potassium. And a handful of trace elements."

Kate felt a thrill. "Sea water," she said. "And us six hours from the coast."

After a moment Nations cleared his throat. "Did she say she was attacked?"

"All she's done is mumble under her breath."

"What's her name?" Kate asked.

Gregor shrugged. "According to her driver's license, Madeline Keif. We've called her husband. He's on his way."

Kate stepped closer to the woman. She was around forty, with washed-out brown hair and faded green eyes. Her body was lumpy, nondescript. Average by all accounts. And yet...

"Mrs. Keif? Madeline? Can you hear me?"

The woman stared at the floor. Her lips moved. Kate eased forward.

"Madeline? I'm Kate Buchanan, Gainesville P.D. I'm here to help you."

Just when Kate was beginning to think she wouldn't answer, Madeline Keif drew a deep breath, releasing it in a long, ragged sigh. She turned her head and looked at Kate. "What makes you think I need help?"

"There's no need to be frightened," Kate continued, as if the woman had not spoken. "We only want to ask some questions. Anything you can say, any detail you might remember, can help us catch the man who did this to you."

Mrs. Keif continued to stare at Kate. Her eyes had cleared considerably, and Kate noticed a flush of color had suffused her cheeks.

"Did what?"

"The man who attacked you. You told the cabby who brought you here you'd been raped. You told Dr. Gregor the same thing."

Keif shook her head irritably, as if trying to dislodge a worrisome fly. "Yes, I...I think I said that. There was a man..." She frowned.

"Did you know him?"

"No...he was...strange..."

"A stranger?"

The woman giggled, and Kate was startled to see the shine in her eyes. It's happened again, she thought.

"Yes...no...not a stranger...but strange."

Kate swallowed. "In what way strange?"

This time there was no mistaking it. Madeline Keif blushed like a teenager after her first kiss. To Kate it seemed as if years dropped from her face, leaving her seemingly young and, if not beautiful, suffused with an inner light.

"I was down stairs, in the basement. Doing the wash. I was alone...and then—not. He was there."

"He'd been hiding?"

"No. Just...there. Gazing at me. He had the...most...beautiful...song..."

Kate felt Nations move up beside her. "What did he look like," she asked. "Can you describe him?"

The woman ignored her. She was starring into the far distance, a slow, dreamy smile on her face. An angel smile. Kate shivered.

"He...touched me. My face. My eyes. My mind. And I lay down on the folding table...and...I..."

"Did he speak? Threaten you? Tell you his name?"

"He...I...don't recall..."

They tried a few more lines of questioning, but could get nothing more from the woman on the gurney. Only that shy, secret smile.

The two detectives exchanged glances. Kate nodded. Nations cleared his throat. "Mrs. Keif," he said. His voice was soft, respectful. "Just one more question."

She glanced at him, raised an eyebrow.

"Deep inside, in your secret self, what do you yearn for most?"

"I...don't understand."

"What is your most cherished dream, ma'am? Your fondest hope?"

"Why...I don't know...I've always wanted to be a painter. I used to draw when I was a girl. Beautiful charcoal sketches. Thought I might be good enough to get a scholarship, but, you know..." she shrugged. "My folks discouraged it. Called it a "waste of time". Then, after I got pregnant and married...Joe, he wouldn't hear of it. No woman of his was going to go to school. No way, no how..."

Her voice faded away, but the dreamy look lingered.

"Thank you for your time," Kate whispered. She felt shaken. "We'll need to talk with you some more, but for now, rest."

They started for the door.

"Officer?"

Kate turned. Madeline Keif was looking at her, and now Kate wondered how she had ever thought her unlovely.

"Yes?"

"The man...I can't remember anything about his appearance. Only...his eyes...his beautiful eyes..."

"You noticed their color?"

"Yes, ma'am. They were silver. Silver."

* * * * *

They were back in the car, headed down Academy Street. Gray clouds pressed down on the Ford's roof.

Nations carefully pulled around a huge oak limb that lay half in the road. Other limbs littered the grounds of Brenau University, lay splintered and twisted on the sidewalks. Kate noticed a hoary oak on the front lawn of the administration building. A great lower limb had sheared off, taking part of the trunk with it. The wound gleamed, white and ugly.

"Look at this mess," Nations said. "Christ, who would believe this is officially the first day of spring?"

The ice had done a number on the school's ancient trees. Oaks and elms drooped under ice shrouds, and small clusters of pines bent towards the ground like old men under the weight of years. Isolated pines had fared worse. Several lay shattered and broken on the ground.

The sight of those lone pines—reduced to so much kindling—contributed to Kate's darkening mood.

"Figures", she said softly. "Out on your own. Growing tall and strong. Carefree, independent, secure in your strength. Reaching for the sky. And then—something comes, something outside of you, beyond your understanding, a force you have no defense against. And it breaks you down. Destroys you."

Nations looked at her. "Shit, Buchanan, that's morbid," he said. Then he laughed. "You got the blues, girl. Time for some of that healin' power."

He reached over, popped a CD in the player, fiddled with the buttons. A song floated from the speakers, grainy and monophonic, a blues tune from the past.

"Found this on the Internet," he said. "Took me over an hour. You'll never guess this one..."

"Robert Johnson, 'Hellhound on My Trail'", Kate answered absently, after just the first few bars. Her mind was still distracted by the devastation outside her window.

Nations blinked. "You're shittin' me. Thought sure that one would throw you." His deep laugh lifted Kate's spirits. "Is there any blues song you don't know?"

She allowed herself a slight smile. "I just call 'em as I hear 'em."

Nations shook his head, then turned his attention back to the road. "Has to be right about here," he said. He squinted through the driver's side window at the shuttered houses lining the street, while Kate studied the ones on her side.

Brenau University was an urban college, tucked into a park-like campus within a neighborhood slowly transitioning from old-home residential to office commercial. Most of the period homes had been converted to offices serving law firms, community care organizations, or other low-impact land uses. Some remained homes, however, and it was one of these the two detectives were looking for.

"Damn investors," Nations muttered. "No style. Destroyed a whole neighborhood with their office conversions."

Kate smiled, then tensed. "I have it over here," she said.

Nations pulled into a concrete drive and killed the engine.

This home was considerably different from its commercial neighbors. Lush evergreen plantings, now filmed with ice, framed the dwelling and adorned the foundation. Everywhere was green, in a variety of hues and textures. Kate was surprised to see early daffodils poking yellow heads up through frozen slush. Massed conifers served as backdrop for carefully placed deciduous shrubs, just beginning to show leaf buds. The composition, though full and lush, was designed and planted so that the end result was a harmonious unity. The little house nestled within the cradling garden and the total affect was one of peace and tranquility.

The detectives moved to the porch, stepping gingerly on the ice-slick steps. Nations rang the bell while Kate watched an errant breeze play around a crystal wind chime. The chime tinkled faintly, a sharp contrast to the sound of chain saws from down the street.

"Hi." The voice came from the side of the house. "Didn't hear your car."

The two detectives turned towards the voice. A woman in her mid-fifties, dressed in old, patched coveralls, a faded red University of Georgia sweatshirt and a ratty straw hat, faced them with a sunny smile. In her hands she held a mass of plants, their roots clotted with black earth. More dirt splotched her cheek.

"If I'd known company was coming, I'd have cleaned up a mite." She raised a mud-smeared hand. "Forgive me if I don't shake. I'm Josie Fowler – and I've met you two before, haven't I?"

"At the hospital," Kate said, smiling. She showed her badge. "Detectives Buchanan and Nations. We interviewed you after you were attacked last year. We were in the neighborhood and thought we'd stop by, see if you remembered anything else about that night."

"Can't help you there. Minds a blank for the most part. But come on around back, get out of the cold. I'm in the middle of something, but we can talk about it while I work."

They followed the tiny woman around the side of her house and into a rear work area. A greenhouse snuggled against a back fence.

Fowler led the detectives inside. Moist heat enveloped Kate.

She looked around. Pots and flats of various sizes were placed haphazardly, on the edge of the slate floor and on strategically located workbenches. And, everywhere, were the plants. Potted narcissus; full-leafed coleus; dwarf azalea—more species than Kate could separate and identity from the jungle of flowers and greenery vying for attention. Kate was charmed.

Fowler knelt on one knee before a tangle of variegated liriope and resumed breaking the clumps apart. And while Fowler pulled at the plants, Kate questioned her about the night she'd been raped.

"I can't recall much," Fowler said, arranging liriope in a series of flats on a low bench. "But I've thought about it a lot." She shot Kate an apologetic look. "I can't really remember being afraid...but everything is such a jumble. Somehow I got the impression he might have been a sailor."

Nations perked up. "That never came out in previous interviews," he said.

Fowler shrugged. "May be my imagination, or a false memory. Seems he may have worn one of those coats – a pea coat, I think they're called." She stared at the plants in her hands, ran her fingers along their tapering leaves. "Anyway, that's all behind me now. Along with all the bad stuff."

"What do you mean?" Kate asked.

"It's just that...the rape...it was a turning point. My life had gone to hell, see. My son...I lost him in an automobile accident three years ago. Couldn't seem to get past it. Started drinking..." She stared at the greenhouse wall, fogged with humidity. "Let myself go, really. John...my husband...he couldn't take it. Left in disgust. I was heading downhill and picking up steam when the rape happened."

"And that somehow brought you out of it?" Nation's voice held a tinge of disbelief.

Fowler seemed to shake herself. She tucked the last plant in a flat, rose, brushed her hands on the legs of her overalls. She smiled. "It's weird. After the rape, I felt strange. Disjointed. Like I was a bug in amber, viewing the world through a distorted yellow haze. But after a few days things started to come together again in a way I didn't expect.

"I'd always wanted to garden, always liked plants. Never seemed to get around to it somehow. But, suddenly, I developed this intense interest in horticulture. It was like an obsession. I began studying everything I could find on the subject – and believe me, there's a hell of a lot of material out there. I read. I talked to gardeners, landscape designers, landscape architects. Somewhere along the way I stopped drinking. I forgot about my divorce. Even my son's death faded to a tolerable ache."

She looked at them, her face somber. "I've never focused so intensely on anything in my life. It was...unnerving."

She was silent for a moment, and Kate waited. Finally Fowler gestured around the greenhouse. "Now I have this," she said. "Something I love. Something I'm good at. I grow plants, sell exotics. Do design. Make a fair living. I've even won a few awards." She smiled. "And I've shed my self pity. I'm whole again."

"The rape was responsible for this?" Nations asked.

"A catalyst, maybe," Fowler said. "All I know is that I'm content. And free of demons for the first time in my life."

* * * * *

"What do you think about the sailor bit?" Kate asked.

Nations waited while a public works truck passed, its bed filled to overflowing with splintered limbs and branches. He pulled out of Fowler's drive, headed uptown.

"Kind of thin," he said. "None of the others have mentioned anything about 'Popeye'."

Kate grunted. Under the shades, her left eye ached. Probably be a shiner there, she thought absently.

"Might be worth following up on," she finally said.

It was Nation's turn to grunt. Then..."Think I'll make an investment."

Kate looked at him. He was watching the road, steering with one big hand.

"Okay. I'll bite."

He smiled grimly. "In two or three months I'm gonna go see Mrs. Keif. She'll be painting by then. Nothing will keep her from it. I'm gonna buy me a painting." He glanced at her, totally serious. "One day it might be worth something."

* * * * *

Kate came home to an empty house. She took the opportunity generated by Mike's absence to practice the blues. Her "studio"—a corner of the unused dining room—held a stool, a music stand, and two guitars – a Seagull acoustic, and a Flat V electric she'd fallen in love with the first time she'd heard it. Stacks of sheet music lay in haphazard piles on the table, alongside her collection of blues CDs and a Boss miniature recording studio.

For an hour she worked on Albert King licks, but King was a tough nut to crack. She listened to the CD tracks over and over, striving to unravel the essence of his songs, but finally gave up in frustration. King's music was deceptively simple. She could manage the basic melody lines, but there was something missing. She could never seem to capture, in her own playing, the elusive soul, the distilled essence of life, present in most all the old blues men's work.

Her first guitar had been an old El Degas, a cheap instrument with bad intonation she'd picked up for next to nothing at a pawnshop. At night, locked away in her room, safe for the moment from the waking nightmare of her home life, she would softly strum chords gleaned from the dog-eared chord book that had come with the guitar, or pick out melody lines from songs on the radio. She kept it quiet, fearing the wrath of her alcoholic father. But the music was there, in her mind, soothing, comforting, an orderly, almost mystical language she could use to convey her most secret feelings, her deepest hurt. She could sense it. She could see it.

And so she got better.

She kept at it through high school and into college, using her talent to supplement her meager financial aid, playing gigs wherever she could find them. Her earlier efforts ran to folk and pop tunes. Then a boyfriend turned her on to Howlin' Wolf and B.B. King, and she never looked back. She bought, begged or borrowed every blues recording she could find, and practiced until her fingers bled. And she did all right. She had a fine voice that carried well, and accompanied herself with fluid chord work and intertwining melody lines. But the plateau she aspired to continued to elude her.

So she put away the guitar and concentrated on her schooling. Eventually she'd graduated with a degree in criminology and went to work for the Atlanta P.D., where she'd excelled on the street. She worked hard and rose fast through the ranks, making detective grade at twenty-eight, the youngest detective on the force. But Atlanta was getting to her, so she resigned her post and moved to Gainesville, a smaller town with room to grow in ways other than professional.

She was partnered with Andy Nations, fresh from the Rangers. They'd hit it off immediately. Andy's methodology fully complemented her more intuitive approach, with the result being one of the highest arrest and conviction records on the force.

At thirty-three she felt she'd left the past behind. She was at the height of her career, enjoying her work and looking eagerly to the future.

And then she'd met Mike Buchanan.

A rising star in the district attorney's office, Mike charmed her from the first with his humor, good looks and (what she thought at the time) compassion and understanding.

They were married less than a year after they met.

It took her much less time than that to realize that her past had caught up with her.

* * * * *

Kate sighed, and sat the Flat V back on its stand. She couldn't concentrate. It didn't help that King had played left-handed on an upside down guitar. But mostly her mind kept wandering to the case.

She put on a Muddy Waters disk, turned it down low, and laid a fire in the small fireplace. Then she curled up in her armchair with a cup of hot tea and turned on her laptop.

There were seven names in the file, seven women who had crossed paths with the rapist they now called Popeye. Women who remembered next to nothing about their attacker.

They were a diverse lot. Four were white, two black, one Hispanic. Their ages ranged from eighteen to seventy-eight. And all had been changed in some profound way by the encounter.

There was Angie Conner, the lone teen. She'd been attacked while hiking in the Chicopee Woods preserve. But maybe hiking wasn't the right word. Before the attack, she'd been clinically depressed, bordering on suicide. Her shrink had her on medication – but she'd taken a gun with her into the preserve.

Afterward, however, her depression lifted completely. She started socializing. Became a joiner. Found a church, found Jesus, and now seemed to be a normal, fun-loving young woman. And she was med-free.

Some of the others, like Fowler, exhibited startling changes in their lifestyles expressed in an intense period of self-education and discovery that drastically improved their circumstances. Most were victims of bad luck, neglect or abuse, unable to climb from the pit life had dug for them. But after the rapes they'd experienced what Kate could only call a metamorphosis, from cowed, timid women resolved to their fate, to focused, energetic, firebrands dedicated to their passions.

She scrolled down the list. Martha Montgomery, black, age forty-seven. Lived in poverty and illiteracy, with four kids from as many daddies. After the rape, she'd somehow—almost overnight—learned to read, and was now attending college nights while working as a paralegal in a law office—and supporting her kids.

Elizabeth Kent. Thirty-four. Wanted desperately to have a family, but she'd lost three fetuses to miscarriage. Four months after the rape, she'd conceived. She was due in a couple of months. Twins.

Strangest of all was Iris Ketchem. The old lady. She'd been diagnosed with incurable cancer and borderline Alzheimer's. She was raped while in her nursing home bed.

How Popeye had gotten in remained a mystery. But the real mystery was how the cancer had faded into remission. How the Alzheimer's had disappeared entirely. Ketchem was now cancer-free, alert and energetic. And no longer living in a nursing home.

Kate shook her head and sipped her tea. Nothing new here. A few of the women insisted that Popeye had sung to them, some exotic song they couldn't quiet remember. Montgomery mentioned that she thought he'd worn a merchant mariner's cap of plain black wool. And Kent, like Mrs. Keif, noted the silver eyes – but that couldn't be right. Maybe mirrored sunglasses? She sighed, irritated. Not much about this case made sense.

On a whim, she plugged her laptop into her cable modem and logged onto the Net. She pulled up a search engine and typed in 'exotic singers'. She got hits for 'Tanita Tikarim, exotic singer-song writer; reviews for titles by Artists/Groups; Polynesian Dancers and Hawaiian Entertainment'...she shook her head irritably. Nothing here.

A search for 'singing sailors' caused mild excitement by mentioning Popeye – but of course it referred to the cartoon sailor, and not the other one.

'Song + sailor' yielded nothing. She sighed. This was ridiculous. She thought a moment, then typed 'song + silver eyes'.

She scanned the hits. No luck. What had she been expecting, anyway? The killers name in big, bold font? She was about to close the laptop when one of the entries caught her eye. She scanned it, and a chill swept down her spine. She clicked on the link, waited impatiently for the web page to come up. And read...

from Legends of Folklore – Tracking the Vampire Through Myth and Mythology, by Dr. Rubin Flare.

Excerpt, Chapter 13: The Incubus

'...one of the earliest mentions of the "psychic" vampire. Another was the Incubus, who also used music to entrap his prey. This was the male version, the counterpoint to the Succubus. Legend has it that the Incubus would enter the woman's dwelling on a stormy night, riding a wind from the sea (obviously not needing an invitation like other species of vampire!). Thereupon, it would entice and paralyze its female victims with a peculiar, hypnotizing, erotic song. Once within close proximity to its victim, the Incubus would further bind the woman with a freezing stare from its silver eyes. While the woman or girl was thus entrapped, the Incubus would mount her and engage in intercourse, feeding upon the woman's emotions and life force. Unlike conventional vampires of legend, the Incubus did not need blood to survive. It was a parasite that gained sustenance from its victim's psychic energy. The woman was left feeling drained and weak, and some never recovered from the ordeal, possibly wasting away and dying. The Incubus, with its stolen nourishment, would then ride the wind back to the sea, where it was said to dwell within craggy shoreline caves, on lonesome foreboding islands, or even beneath the waves themselves...'

* * * * *

The door slammed in the foyer and Kate jumped, startled. Hastily she shut down the laptop. She rose, slopping tea over her blouse.

Mike Buchanan came into the room, frowning. He tossed his briefcase on the couch, shrugged off his suit coat and threw it at a chair.

"God damn Paul Clark," he snarled. "Decided he's not backing me. Says I'm 'not the man for the job'".

At forty-two, Michael Buchanan was fit and trim, standing an even six feet. He'd been a boxer in the Army and stayed in shape, running five miles a day and working out on a speed bag. He was dark and good looking, but now his scowl reminded Kate of a threatening thunderhead. All the music leached out of her. She forgot about the case, forgot everything. Her perception shifted inward, towards that dark place in her soul where a scared little girl still dwelled.

Now he brushed past Kate, tugging at his tie as he headed for the kitchen. He rummaged through the refrigerator. "Jesus, Kate, you didn't pick up beer?"

Inadvertently, Kate's eyes went to his hands—big hands, scarred—hands she'd once thought so gentle. She could remember trembling at his touch, before power and ambition soured their relationship.

She still trembled when he laid his hands on her, for other reasons now.

"I, uh, I forgot." She ran her fingers jerkily through her hair. "Really, Mike, it's been a long day, with this case and all..."

He moved up to her, close. His hand cupped the back of her neck. His breath, smelling of mint, was warm against her cheek.

"You know, I work hard, too. Is it too much to ask to have a bottle of cold beer waiting for me?"

"Mike, I..."

He gently rubbed her neck. "When are you going to break this case, Kate? How long's it been now? Over a year? Think you'd have caught this prick by now. Can't you see how much it could help me – help us – if you caught him quick? I'd put him away. The publicity would carry me over the top."

"We're closing in...ahhhhhh!"

Kate hissed as Buchanan grabbed a fistful of her hair and forced her head back. Pain flared along the back of her scalp.

"You're not much help, Kate," he whispered. "Do you understand how hard it is to run a senate race this day and time?"

"I'm trying, Mike, really I am, just..."

He pulled hard, forcing her back and down.

"Mike, please!" She heard the whimper in her voice, hated it. "You're hurting..."

He slapped her. The sound was like a glove striking a bag. She tasted blood.

"Maybe you need to think about it awhile," he said. His voice was deadly calm. "Maybe you can figure out how to catch this guy with a little time-out."

"No, Mike, please no, not that..." Her voice was small, thin, a frightened little girl's voice.

He started to drag her across the floor. She cried out, tears welling from the pain and terror, and tried weakly to resist. He swung around, quick as a cat, and sucker-punched her in the gut.

Kate's wind left her in a rush. She went to her knees, gasping for air. Mike pulled open the door to the hall closet, grabbed her by the upper arm, and literally threw her inside.

She tried to scream "No!", but managed only a sick croak.

The door slammed shut. There was a click as Buchanan locked it from the other side.

Kate was alone in the relentless dark.

* * * * *

She'd made a mistake in marrying Mike Buchanan. But she'd trusted him. Trusted him with her deepest secrets, her darkest dreads.

With her fear of the dark.

Another mistake.

* * * * *

The little girl curled into a corner of the closet. "Mama," she whimpered. "Mama, don't leave me. Don't leave me alone..."

But her mother ignored her, lost in the rhythm of her pathetic pacing. Gliding down the hall, from room to room, drifting like a ghost through a house that was never a home. Transparent, fading. From day to day the little girl watched as the woman wilted, folded in on herself, like a morning glory at the end of the day.

"Please, Mama. Don't leave me alone, with him..."

* * * * *

Kate turned twelve the day they buried her mother. The day Uncle Ray came to live with them.

Her dad was a shiftless no-account who lived for drinking and gambling, who couldn't hold a job and who'd lived off her mom for years. Her mother's insurance settlement had left her dad fairly well off. Without her mother to provide at least a semblance of order and normalcy, her dad was free to do as he pleased.

At first it was only a slap or two, whenever she didn't move fast enough to please him. It escalated from there. The belt came next, for the slightest infraction, real or imagined. Kate tried to keep a low profile, tried to please him.

The beatings continued.

And then, Uncle Ray moved in. Her daddy's brother. Unwashed, fat and slovenly, with big, scarred hands and mean eyes. He fit right in, as worthless as his brother.

Now Kate had two to do for. The whippings increased, and Uncle Ray lent a hand in her discipline. Breathing hard ('cause he was mad, the little girl voice inside her said, you made him mad), he would yank down her shorts, turn her over his knee and whip her with his big hand until her bottom was numb and red. Her daddy would slouch against the wall, smiling his little smile. And watch.

But Ray could be nice. She liked moon pies, and he would bring her some from the corner store. He'd say, "Fetch me the paper, Moon Pie," and slap her lightly on the rear.

She'd run off to get it, and Ray would smile that peculiar smile that never seemed to reach his eyes, and give her one of the treats.

Then one day she was late with supper and her daddy, in a fit of rage, struck her with his fist. Terrified, she jumped up, sprinted across the kitchen into the hall, trying to find a place to hide. She ran into Ray.

"Hey there, Moon Pie." He laughed. His hands were on her, moving. She pulled loose, ran to the hall closet, tugged open the door and slipped quickly inside. Whimpering, she yanked at the knob, but a big boot appeared between the jamb and the door, blocking the door open. She heard Ray laugh again.

"Where you think you're going, girl?" And this time she sensed an eagerness, something dark and vile, behind his words. The door opened. Ray's corpulent body blocked the light. He was shirtless, his gut hanging over cut-off jeans. Kate could smell his unwashed stink. He smiled, eyes glittering.

"She's a little too prissy for her own good, Ray," she heard her daddy say from somewhere. "Maybe she needs a little more discipline." And then..."Why don't you give it to her?"

Ray's smile widened and, as Kate watched wide-eyed, he stepped into the closet and pulled the door shut behind him.

The last thing Kate saw before the dark closed around her was her daddy's face. Watching. Smiling.

* * * * *

"You're the quiet one today," Nations said. Kate was huddled next to the Ford's door, staring out the window. "You feeling okay?"

"Yeah," she said. She wouldn't look at him. "Just tired. Didn't sleep well."

She felt his eyes on her, felt the unasked questions.

"Kate..." she heard him start, and then the radio squawked.

"All units...anyone in the vicinity of Main and Bradford—the old soybean mill—please respond. Possible rape in progress."

Kate came alive, grabbed the radio, keyed the switch. "Buchanan and Nations. Give me details."

"A kid called 911. Said she and her mom were taking a short cut from their apartment to a convenience store out past the old mill. Said some man was there, and he took her mom into an alley. The kid said the man was wearing a black coat and a 'funny cap'."

Kate's heart lurched. "We're on Jesse Jewell, a minute away. We'll take it."

She turned to Nations, saw him looking at her. Saw the same thing in his eyes she knew was mirrored in her own.

Nations swung the Ford into a tight turn and hit the gas.

* * * * *

It had started to sleet by the time they reached the old soybean mill. The mill squatted, troll-like, on a weed-choked, debris-strewn lot in a dilapidated industrial area tucked between a decaying, low-income apartment complex and the commercial strip bordering the state highway. A hangout for feral kids, gangs and junkies. Broken glass, trash and rank grass lapped against the mill, a forgotten fortress set amidst squalor. Ancient, rust-pitted railroad sidings, some still holding old box cars, disappeared into the maze of pipes and catwalks, grain bins and scaffolding, chutes and silos and warehouse space that made up the mill complex. Layers of graffiti adorned every surface.

There was no sound but the steady hiss of sleet on metal.

They found the girl hunched against a beat-up chain link fence, shivering under a worn windbreaker that was no match for the sleet. She clutched a woman's purse to her chest with one tiny hand. The other held a cell phone.

Kate knelt beside the girl as Nations scanned the area. "Hi, there. Are you the one that called 911?"

The little girl nodded. Her face was pinched, strained, her eyes huge. Her lower lip trembled.

"My mama – we were walking to the store. A man came out, from there." She pointed to the thick shadows pooled at the base of the mill like water from a stagnant pond. "I tried to go with her," the girls lip trembled harder. A large tear ran down her cheek. "She made me stay here."

"It's O.K., honey. It'll be fine." Kate glanced around at the sound of tires on gravel. A squad car pulled up next to Nation's Bronco.

"Stay with the girl!" she yelled at the officer climbing out. She drew her weapon and moved towards Nations, who was already easing towards the mill.

They stopped beside a boxcar with one side smashed in. Low, slate-gray clouds scuttled across the sky. Twilight had slipped in on cat feet, further reducing visibility. Kate glanced at Nations, mouthed "Go", and the two detectives gingerly worked their way into the twisted nightmare maze of metal that was the old soybean mill.

Slowly they moved forward. It was dark inside the mill complex, among the pipes and girders, amidst the silos and storage bins and broken down railroad cars. Sleet pattered on the steel, rattled on the catwalks above them. Nations flicked on a small Maglite®, and a thin lance of light pierced the gloom. The beam danced over the shadows, probing and questing.

Despite the chill, Kate was sweating. She switched the Glock to her left hand, wiped her right palm on her slacks. She stared at the hungry darkness around them. Swallowed.

The space under the mill was all twists and turns and soon Kate had lost all sense of direction. Methodically they searched the nooks and crannies, the mills secret, hidden places.

They found the woman sprawled on her back between a grain bin and a boxcar. Her skirt was hiked up to her waist. Her panties were gone. Her eyes were open, but held a dazed, blank look.

Nations knelt beside her. "She's alive, thank God". He took her hand, muttering, soothing.

"Wha...what happened? Where's Amy?" Her voice was thick, slurred.

"Don't worry, your daughter's safe. We're cops," Nations whispered. "You're in good hands."

Kate eased past him, her own flashlight flaring. Thick shadows coalesced past the end of the boxcar, beyond the reach of her light.

Andy was talking into his radio, calling for paramedics, no doubt. Kate stared ahead. Into the dark. She swallowed.

"Wait here with her," she whispered. "I'll go on."

"No, Kate, nothing doing," he hissed, and started to rise. The woman clutched at his coat sleeve. "Don't leave me! Please, don't go!" Her voice was rising on a frantic note. Nations squeezed her hand, talking softly, soothingly, striving to placate her while his eyes pleaded with Kate. "Stay here," he said in a fierce whisper. "Wait for backup!"

She ignored him. Her blood was up, she was mad clear through. The little girl voice inside asked her what the hell she thought she was doing, but she ignored that also. This woman had been humiliated, abused, and raped, and the perpetrator was still here, still close, Kate could sense it.

And she would have him. Here. Now.

She turned her back on Nation's pleading and followed her light into the heart of darkness.

* * * * *

She estimated she'd been searching the forgotten corners of the millworks for five or ten minutes, her nerves drawn taunt as a guitar string, when the beam of her flashlight faded to a sickly yellow, then died out altogether.

She was alone, cocooned by enveloping dark.

Kate tried to swallow, but her mouth was dry. This couldn't be right. This was a rechargeable flashlight – she'd taken it from the charger this morning.

Bulb, maybe? She lightly slapped the light against her thigh, never lowering her gun for an instant. Nothing.

The darkness pressed in on her with an almost palpable weight, suffocating, clutching at her throat with the fingers of a strangler.

Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to charge in here, knight errant, all on her lonesome.

Kate thumbed her radio. "Andy?" she whispered. "You there?" Faint static rasped from the receiver.

She hesitated, uncertain as to her next move. After a moment she noticed that it wasn't pitch black, that her eyes could discern some forms as ebony smudges against a lighter dark.

She touched her tongue to her lips. Slid one foot forward, then the other. Her jaw ached, and she realized she'd been clenching her teeth.

Sleet hissed in the dead weeds between two giant grain bins to her left. Metal creaked around her as the mill settled. And then a sound, a faint rasping of cloth on steel. Behind her...

Kate whirled, Glock thrust out before her. She sensed a dark form about thirty feet away, looming beside a mass of rusted pipe she'd passed earlier.

"Andy?" her whisper sounded small even to her. Then, louder..."Identify yourself!"

There was no sound from the dark silhouette. Kate strained her eyes until they watered, but could discern no details. Everything was a soft wash of black.

Then...movement. Towards her.

"Stand away from the wall!" Kate shouted. The form passed from between the grain bins, where the shadows gave way to a weak, sickly light. Kate recognized the cut of a pea coat, what could have been a merchant mariner's cap.

"On the ground, now!" she shouted again, her gun unwavering. The form came on, passing out of the light, relentlessly towards her, seeming to glide – now, she realized belatedly, only a dozen feet away. Her finger tightened on the trigger.

The song burst on her awareness, freezing her like a bird under the eye of a cobra. She had never experienced such music, so hauntingly sweet yet chillingly alien. The song line wormed into her mind, into her heart, as if alive and seeking sustenance.

Kate faltered. She felt dizzy, disoriented. She blinked, trying to clear the fog from her vision. The song rose and fell, with no discernable rhythm or melody, yet so beautiful it brought tears to her eyes.

A brilliant light flared from the darkness. The song cut off abruptly, as if a switch had been thrown. Kate swayed, blinking. Her hand felt heavy. She glanced down, and it took her a moment to realize her gun was pointing at the ground.

Like an afterthought, her own flashlight glowed red-orange, then yellow, and then the same intense hard white it had been before.

Hot light washed over her face and she flinched. "Kate, thank God. I heard you shouting. You okay?" Nation's deep voice, full of concern, pulled her back from the edge of darkness.

"I'm...what happened?"

"You tell me. You're the one that ran off without her partner. See anything?"

Kate shook her head. It felt full of cobwebs. What had happened here? What had she just experienced?

She played the concentrated beam of her revitalized flashlight around the area. Shadows leaped back at its touch.

The light revealed nothing.

"He's gone," she whispered, and wondered at the sense of loss.

"What? I didn't catch that."

Kate looked at him. "I said he's gone. We won't find him in here." She shouldered past Nations, headed back the way she'd came.

And then she turned. "Andy, did you...when you were..."

"What?"

"When you came up on me, did you hear anything...strange?"

"What are you talking about?"

She watched him carefully. "Like, maybe...some kind of music? A song, maybe?"

"Couldn't hear a thing over that damn sleet. Until you started hollering, that is. What's this about, Kate?"

She stared at him a long moment. Then, abruptly, she spun on her heel and walked quickly away.

* * * * *

They followed in the wake of the ambulance to the hospital. Nations parked the Ford, killed the ignition, and turned on her. "God damn it, what were you thinking, pulling a Rambo on me like that?"

Kate knew Andy was steamed, knew he had a right to be. She didn't care. She didn't care anymore what anyone thought. Something was riding her, eating her up. She felt wired, nerves drawn taut as a drum. And fighting mad.

"What did the woman say," she snapped. "Anything new?"

Nations stared at her a long time, then sighed. "Nothing. Said she didn't see his face, didn't even realize what had happened. One moment walking her daughter to the store, the next, waking up half-dressed wandering what the fuck had happened."

"She won't be any help to us," Kate said, almost to herself. "None of them will."

"What makes you say that? Damn it, Kate, what did you see tonight?"

She turned on him. "I didn't see anything. I couldn't see a thing in that dark hole. Why don't you leave me the fuck alone?"

"Kate, you..."

"Shut up, Andy. Quit riding me. I'm sorry I left you behind, if that's what you want to hear. But I wanted him, Andy. I wanted him bad. I had the chance and took it and then the bastard slipped away and I lost him and God damn it! I was so close..."

She squeezed her eyes shut. Her chest felt empty, hollowed out.

"Kate, it's not your fault..."

"Damn it, Andy!" She screamed out the words. "You don't understand a thing!" She flung open the door, stumbled out of the car. She felt hot, flushed. Her eyes stung.

Nations climbed out behind her. "Kate, don't..."

She faced him, slowly backing away. She felt trapped, as if caught in a snare. She couldn't catch her breath.

"Just...just leave me be, Andy. I need to be alone for awhile."

Nations frowned. "Come on, Kate. I need you...we got to debrief the victim."

She shook her head, held up a hand, palm out. "Time out, Andy," she whispered. She managed a smile. "Just – do it yourself. Go interview the woman. I need some time to think. I'll see you tomorrow." She turned her back on him, thrust her hands deep in her coat pockets, and started walking.

"Kate, come on back. It's freezing out there."

"I'll get a cab." She increased her pace.

She felt his eyes on her for a full minute before the shadows swallowed her.

* * * * *

Kate walked into the "canyon", following the sidewalk adjacent to the hospital parking deck. She was seething. What had happened tonight, deep in the bowels of the soybean mill? Had the man—the rapist—really been there, or was she chasing shadows? Had the need to catch him so bad caused her to imagine things?

She walked on, deep in thought. Somewhere along the way the sleet had turned into a steady snowfall, obscuring the muted security lighting of the Cardiac Care Unit across the street from the parking garage.

Kate's thoughts turned to Mike, and a thrill of fear washed through her. She was no nearer to catching Popeye than she'd ever been, and Mike would be mad, he'd punish her...

She shook her head, wiped at the tears that streaked her cheeks. She felt tainted, disgusted with herself. Not by her encounter with the phantom rapist in the mill (imagined, no doubt), but by her own emotional maelstrom.

Mike. He was so handsome, so sure of himself. His relentless ambition had him on the fast track to political glory.

The arrogant bastard. The selfish prick.

Why the hell did she let him treat her as he did?

Because you're scared, that small voice, that little girl's voice, whispered to her. He'll do things to you.

She shivered, glancing around. The snow fell faster, drawing a shroud over the area.

She was cold now, and her mad was dissipating under the relentless fall of the snow. She was beginning to regret not staying with Andy at the warm hospital. Andy. She'd have to apologize to him. He hadn't deserved her spite. He was a jewel.

She reached the end of the canyon. The hospital parking lot proper lay just ahead. She'd be able to find a cab on the street there.

And then she stopped. A chill that had nothing to do with the snow clenched her heart in icy fingers.

The figure stood, still and silent, within deep shadow at the corner of the parking deck. An exit from the structure opened on the street here like the black maw of a cave.

Faint yellow light from a street lamp in the hospital parking lot barely illuminated the merchant mariner's cap on the figure's head.

Kate stared, then tore her gaze away, glancing around. Nothing moved through the veil of snow. No cars crept by in the parking lot or on the street, and no pedestrians made their way to the hospital entrance. She was alone, on the sidewalk, in front of the parking deck. With the rapist.

She turned back just in time to see him step into the black opening to the lower level of the parking deck.

She spat out an oath. Her rage flared. She pulled the Glock and started at a shuffling run towards the entrance. Her anger was a living, intense thing, welling from deep within her soul, born of past frustrations and ill treatment and focused like a laser on the thing before her. Popeye. The rapist.

At the entrance she paused. Then, crouched low and gun extended, she rushed inside.

It wasn't as dark within the parking deck as it was outside. Faint illumination came from security lights spaced far apart. Some had burned out, however, and what light there was cast a feeble illumination at best.

Her eyes darted, seeking information, discarding irrelevant input. A few cars were parked here, but for the most part this level was empty. Then movement at the bottom of the ramp drew her eye. She turned her head just in time to catch sight of a dark-coated figure slipping out of sight between two concrete columns.

Kate ran. She knew there was a door below, where the ramp began, opening into a stairwell. She had to get there before Popeye.

She reached the door, realized there were no wet footprints leading up to it. Popeye hadn't gone this way.

She turned towards the next level. A big "B" was painted on the wall beside the stairwell door. Basement. The last level.

Cautiously, she peeked around the corner, gun up and ready. The ramp here receded into darkness. A faint flickering from the security light above the stairwell door below reached her eyes.

Between where she stood and the door below, shadows ruled.

Kate fumbled in her pocket for her flashlight, cursed when she realized she'd left it on the seat in Andy's Bronco.

She hesitated, studying the black cavern of the basement level. She swallowed. She could sense the tons of concrete above, pressing down on her.

Don't think about it, asshole. Just do it.

She eased forward, in hunting mode now. The vague hulking outline of a '55 Chevy appeared from the gloom. As Kate eased forward, she saw that several cars were parked on this level. They seemed like slumbering beasts that could wake at any moment and pounce on her, shredding her flesh.

Methodically she checked the space between the parked cars as she came to them. No one waited in the shadows. Nothing sprang out at her. Her breathing was loud, the only sound in the concrete tomb of the parking garage.

She approached the back of the basement level. Moved around each column, careful to keep her distance. Nothing.

She reached the door, frowning. No tracks, but there wouldn't be much water left on his shoes by now. She'd had the door in her line of vision the entire time, however. The damn sorry excuse for a light was right above it. If Popeye had gone that way she'd have seen him. She'd have heard the door open, for Christ sakes.

He hadn't gone this way, the little girl voice whispered. Because he wasn't here.

Could it be he never had been?

Her shoulders slumped. She was suddenly bone tired. Damn it, were her senses betraying her again? Had she put so much pressure on herself to catch this guy that she was following ghosts?

Depressed, she slipped the Glock back into its holster, finding it unerringly in the close blackness. I'll find Andy, she thought. Apologize. And then...

She was staring at the light, the light above the exit door.

Ever so slowly, it was fading out.

She watched, fascinated, horrified, as the light dimmed to a jaundiced yellow, flickered, waned – and went out.

Darkness rushed in to fill the vacuum.

Slowly, Kate turned.

The man was there, a fragment of shadow tall and black and looming, so close she could smell the sea on him. His head was lowered, eyes masked under the brim of his merchant mariners cap. Kate gasped, and her heart lurched. She stumbled back, hand clawing for the Glock.

And the man raised his head and stared at her from eyes of gleaming silver.

Absurdly, Kate noted that the silver lenses weren't glasses. They were eyes, metallic orbs that shone with a light of their own. Whorls of red spiraled in their depths.

And, again, the song rose around her, within her. A song of longing and unending sorrow. Of pain and loss and awful need, a song exquisitely beautiful, irresistible, weaving among the strands of her nerves, binding them as one.

And Kate knew him for what he was.

The silver eyes glowed, seemed to expand, enveloping her. Her eyes locked on the infinity within them. Vaguely, Kate was aware of when the creature reached out, took her hand. She felt parchment skin, dry and leathery against hers. He seemed to float before her, a part of the darkness but separate from it, leading her now, leading her between two parked cars, now lowering her, my God, lowering her to the cold, grease-smeared pavement. The song intensified, expanded, became ever more beautiful, swallowed her soul. Feelings washed over her, sensual, frightening. Her heart labored. Her body was hot, her nipples hard and aching. A dark form hovered above.

The song enfolded her, welcoming, warm, safe. She opened to him—her body, her mind, her —and lost herself in the song.

* * * * *

She floated on a warm sea that, gradually, grew colder.

Kate opened her eyes.

Grainy concrete. Scent of must and oil.

She lay still. Scraps of sensation flitted through her mind. Vague recollections.

An alien need. Sex. Ecstasy.

Understanding.

Her mind veered away for awhile.

* * * * *

Awareness returned with the cold. She realized she was sitting up, naked, her spine pressed against the concrete wall, knees drawn up to chin, arms wrapped tightly around her legs. Shivering.

Moisture slid down her thigh.

I'm leaking down there, she thought. The tide's going out. A cascade of giggles slipped past her lips. With splayed fingers she tried to hold them in.

Sailing, sailing, over the boundless sea...

Her mother had died young, and Kate now knew why. She'd had her self worth excised by life, by abusive parents, by a brutal husband. The germ of her potential cut out, cast down, and ground under the heels of people who were supposed to nurture her.

The message she had received, over and over, was that she was worth nothing. So she'd stopped trying. Even for her daughter.

There are many different kinds of rape, the thought whispered through her mind. And not all are physical.

* * * * *

Kate stood. Her clothes lay around her, lain out neat and tidy, as if she'd taken them off herself and placed them ready for easy access.

She dressed mechanically. She picked up her weapon, still in the holster, and looked at it as if she'd never seen it before. She clipped the holster to her waist.

Suddenly she drew a sharp breath. She smiled dreamily.

The song of the Incubus still echoed in her soul, but it was beginning to fade. She remembered what she'd read earlier, about how the Incubus fed on emotion. It had taken something from her, for sure. All the fears and inadequacies she'd known since childhood, the guilt and abasement she'd felt under her father's hand, the hands of Uncle Ray. And of her husband.

She listened, but the little girl voice was silent.

The Incubus was not a parasite, she thought. It was a symbiont. It took, but it returned in kind.

Maybe it needed the energy generated by extreme emotional stress. But what it took might not necessarily be a bad thing.

And what it gave in turn was ambrosia.

The alien song was gone, now, and Kate was certain that, over time, she wouldn't be able to remember any more than the others. New notes were forming, however, making their presence known with a quiet insistence. Blues notes. The songs of Muddy Waters, Albert King, Lightning Hopkins. And more.

She could feel the music, see it in her mind, building up, demanding her attention, her focus – her potential.

Her head had cleared by the time she reached the upper deck. A rectangle of gray defined the opening.

She'd been underground for hours, she realized. The long night was ending.

Kate rested a moment at the entrance. The snow had stopped, and a breath of warmth teased her cheek with the promise of spring. Water flowed in the gutters. The ice was melting.

The seed of her worth nestled, safe and secure, deep in her soul. Music filled her mind. The promise of her potential.

But first...she checked her weapon, made sure a round was seated in the chamber, and slid it back into the holster. Her eyes gleamed with eagerness. A smile of anticipation played about her lips.

First, she had a district attorney to arrest.

Family Tradition

Will Henry awoke to the persistent tugging of small, insistent hands.

"Wake up, Dad. The sun's up. It's time, huh? Isn't it time?"

Will sat up, although it was mighty tempting to just roll over, snuggle against his wife, and go back to sleep. He rubbed his eyes, blinked, and glanced out the window. A half-mile to the east a faint rose light showed at the crest of Sawyer's Ridge. A beckoning light. He felt the old excitement quicken his pulse.

He turned to the boy fidgeting before him and smiled. "It is at that, Tom. It surely is."

* * * * *

Frank Slaughter cut his lights and turned from the paved county road onto the weed-choked farm lane, ignoring the "Posted – No Trespassing" signs tacked to the bordering pines. He slowed to a crawl, steering carefully in the false light of dawn. A deceptive ground fog shrouded the track, masking the ruts and gullies he vaguely remembered from his scouting trip in late August. Sweat slicked his palms and he gripped the wheel hard as he squinted through the dirty windshield.

The right front tire dropped into a wash-out and the truck lurched, its suspension creaking. Slaughter cursed, babying the gas, and the old Ford grunted and surged out of the rut and up over the top of a small rise.

Slaughter shut off the engine and let the truck's own momentum carry it down the other side. The truck leveled out at the bottom of the hill, where the farm lane merged into a small meadow. Slaughter braked to a stop.

He sat still, trembling and sweating, listening to the engine tick as it cooled.

After a minute he eased open the door and slid out.

Quick now. Speed and stealth. He pulled the gun case from behind the seat. Tugged the Remington from the oiled leather. Loaded it. He scooped up the fifth of Wild Turkey from the passenger seat and tucked it in his vest pocket. It was chilly out—a man would need a nip of the old Irish to keep the nip from his bones. He grinned.

His climbing stand was in the truck bed and he took it out. It was weathered and worn, the wood warped and cracking, camouflage paint peeling, the safety strap frayed and rotting. He really should throw it out and buy one of those new fangled fiberglass jobs—but he'd made this one himself. Hard to junk something you'd created with your own time and sweat.

Slaughter started to cross the farm road, then paused. A scattering of deer tracks patterned the lane where it wasn't grown up in weeds. He went to one knee, ran his fingers over the impressions. Plenty of deer on Henry's place, some a fair size. But he hadn't come for any old deer. Just one buck in particular.

The one he thought of as his buck.

He scowled. Other tracks were visible, intermingled with those of the deer. Padded tracks, with a faint trace of claws.

He'd noticed the spoor of wild dogs when he'd previously scouted the land. The dogs were still here, it seemed, roaming Henry's land. Running the deer.

Wild dogs were the bane of hunters, nuisance animals harassing the deer population. Slaughter had shot his share of dogs, and enjoyed it. Some of the dogs had collars. That hadn't bothered him one bit. Man should keep his dog put up.

Well, he wouldn't be killing dogs today. He had a higher purpose. He grinned again and stood, his knees popping.

He crossed the road, worked his way along the edge of the meadow, and entered the dark woods.

* * * * *

Grandma had biscuits in the oven and gravy simmering in the skillet when Will stepped into the kitchen. Papa lounged at the table, cleaning a lever action Ruger .44. He smiled at Will.

"Morning, son. Where's Tom."

"I made him shower first. He didn't like it much. The eagerness is eating him up."

Papa laughed, slid the breach back into the gun, and clipped it in place. He worked the lever once and sat the gun aside.

Will settled into his chair with a sigh, and Grandma brought him a steaming cup of black coffee. He sipped, enjoying the scents of the kitchen.

Tom's day. Will half-smiled. The boy was ready, sure enough. Will had taught him well, prepared him for this first time. Just as Papa had instructed him, and Great-grandpa had taught Papa. And so it went, for generations of Henrys past. Tom's day. A special day.

A boy's first hunt was one to be remembered.

Tom bounded into the kitchen, all nervous energy. He sat down to a steaming plate of pancakes Grandma placed before him and attacked them with a ravenous appetite.

Papa grinned. "Good Lord, boy, don't your Daddy ever feed you?" Tom smiled shyly around a mouthful of pancakes.

Helen Henry came into the room wearing a comfortable robe. She ruffled Tom's hair, then spied the coffeepot.

"Big day for you, huh, kiddo?" she drawled sleepily. She poured a cup of coffee and glanced at Will. "Sure he's ready, Hon?"

"I'm ready, Mama," Tom answered for his father. "Dad says he's not seen a finer man in the woods. Didn't you, Dad?"

"Sure did. But don't let it go to your head." He smiled reassuringly at his wife. "The boy's got potential, Helen. He'll make a fine hunter, for sure."

* * * * *

Slaughter crossed a shallow creek and wound his way uphill to the spot he'd chosen for his stand. Early sunlight washed the brow of Sawyer's Ridge, and Slaughter cursed. He was late. He prayed fervently that the big buck had not already passed.

He slid his climbing stand from his shoulders, fit it around the trunk of a lean Loblolly pine, and worked his way up. Twenty feet off the ground he stopped and locked the stand in place. His breath came in short gasps, steaming in the frosty air. He tried to relax, let his heartbeat slow. Sweat trickled into his eyes and he wiped his face with a sleeve. He unslung his rifle.

From this stand he had a perfect view of the game trail crossing the flank of Sawyer's Ridge.

Slaughter smiled, lifted the gun, sighted along the trail.

Perfect.

Satisfied, he lowered the rifle and took out his flask. He sipped, then tilted the bottle and had a deep pull. The whiskey flooded his gullet with liquid heat, warming him, loosening him up.

Now all he had to do was wait.

Slaughter was used to waiting. He'd waited all his life for a bragging buck. Waited while his friends harvested the big ones. The trophy heads. The Boone and Crockett contenders.

He'd waited since last winter, when he'd first heard the stories of the monster buck that ranged over the Henry farmstead. He'd waited for that perfect time, when the Henrys had left home on a trip to Disney World and the farm was empty. He'd carefully scouted the land, confirming with his own eyes that the rumors were indeed fact.

Now all he had to do was wait just a little longer. Wait for the buck—his buck—to come to him.

* * * * *

Three generations of Henrys crossed the pasture next to the house and headed towards Sawyer's Ridge. Will carried a short barreled .3030, Papa the Ruger .44. Tom trotted beside them, trying to match the pace of the adults. Will watched him, amused. He remembered how, as a boy, the eagerness had so conflicted with the need to seem nonchalant, unconcerned, at home in the world of men and game and guns.

They entered the woods at the back of the pasture – Will holding down the barbed wire so Tom could cross – and descended a slight slope, treading carefully on frost-slick leaves. They jumped a creek, and Tom paused to examine deer tracks along the bank.

"Near big as my hand!" he whispered. His eyes were huge. Papa laughed.

"That 'ol boy has a spread, too," he said. "And I know where he beds."

"Down in the bottom?" Tom asked.

"Uh-huh. And we'll sit up and wait for him, right where he'll be crossing the Ridge."

* * * * *

Slaughter fought the cold with intermittent nips from his flask. The sun was behind him, casting broad shadows on the south slope of Sawyer's Ridge.

He was angry. He'd arrived at the stand too late, and the damn buck – his Boone and Crockett buck – had slipped away. He'd have to slink away, too, hoping he wouldn't be seen, and come back another day.

He started to sling his rifle preparatory to climbing down when movement tugged at his peripheral vision.

A great whitetail buck trailed from the shadows. It moved cautiously, stopping often to sample the slight breeze, ready to bolt at the slightest provocation. Sunlight glanced off burnished antlers.

The breath caught in Slaughter's throat. For a moment all he could do was stare. Then, glacier slow, he brought up the rifle and sought the buck through the scope.

* * * * *

The blind was not to Will's liking, but it was all there was to hand when they'd topped the ridge and glimpsed the buck angling along the game trail below them. They dropped to the ground, Will privately pleased that Tom made no more sound than he and Papa.

Will eased along the ridge, flanking the buck and slightly above it, until he found a spot that offered concealment and a clear field of fire.

Tom and Papa slipped down beside him. Tom was breathing hard, his eyes bright. Will watched the pulse beating strong in his son's neck. Papa pointed across the ridge.

"There he is, boy. See him, there? You'd best get ready."

Shaking, Tom hunkered down behind the brush and began his preparation as the buck ambled out from behind an alder thicket and started down the hill.

* * * * *

Slaughter cursed as he lost sight of the buck for an instant. But then it re-appeared from a clump of alder, presenting him with a classic shoulder shot.

He took a breath, relaxed, let it out. The scope steadied on a spot just behind the deer's foreleg. Slaughter took up slack on the trigger.

The butt slammed into his shoulder, followed instantly by the sound of the shot—Jesus God that was a hard recoil!—and the buck took off through the trees—did I miss, God damnit, did I miss?—and he tried to work the bolt but something was wrong with his hand, didn't seem to want to work right. And then he was falling, the rotted safety strap giving way, losing his grip on the rifle, landing on his back with bone-crushing force. He gasped, the wind knocked from him, and lay staring up at the sky, fighting to draw breath.

He struggled, pushed himself into a sitting position, his chest heaving—and cold, fresh air filled his aching lungs. He slumped back against the tree trunk, staring at the thin, bare branches laced across the sky.

His back was a riot of pain, but didn't seem to be broken. His right arm, however, was completely numb.

Fell out of the damn tree, he thought. Missed the deer and fell out of the tree. Teach me to drink on stand...

He felt a wet pulsing from his shoulder and looked down. Blood flowed from a great wound below his collar bone.

What the fuck, he thought. Then he remembered. The searing pain in his shoulder. The sound of a shot.

He heard a noise and looked up. Two men stood before him, an old man and a younger one. The young man held a rifle. As Slaughter watched, the man worked the bolt and ejected a spent cartridge.

Slaughter's eyes widened. "You shot...?" he whispered.

Then he saw the boy.

He stood beside the young man, naked as the day he was born. And Slaughter saw an eagerness in his eyes, a hot, wild yearning.

"He's all yours, son," Slaughter heard the young man say.

And as Slaughter watched, horrified, the boy's form shimmered, shifted. He sidled forward, dropped to all fours. His face lengthened, elongated. Grey fur appeared, spreading, covering the lean body. Frightful teeth sprouted from a misshapen jaw.

Much too late, Slaughter realized that the tracks he'd seen earlier had not been made by dogs.

"I'll get rid of the truck," the old man said.

These were the last words Slaughter heard as the young wolf leaped on him.

Anomalies

Nothing ever happens in Booster's Roost.

Don't get me wrong. I like it quiet. And Booster's Roost (population 138 and holding) is as quiet as a morgue on a Monday night.

A politician signed the town's death warrant. Some good ol' boy calling in a favor from the favorite son of a staunch supporter of a die-hard Democrat who happened to sit in the House of Representatives. A name scrawled on a paper, and a high-speed, concrete, quad-lane modern transportation artery appeared in this back-water Georgia county. The "New" State Route 441, it's called. Only a hop, skip and jump from the "Old" 441, it cut Booster's Roost off from the rest of the world as effectively as the guillotine separated the French Bourbons from their heads.

Overnight, Booster's Roost became a ghost town.

The traffic zips by on the "New" 441, skirting the heart of the town, channeling the tourist money into a grab-bag of attractions within the North Georgia mountains and on through the Smokies.

An economic cardiac bypass, you could say.

Booster's Roost sits high and dry, becalmed in a back-water eddy on the wild, free-flowing river of progress.

Dad died right after the four-lane came. I couldn't pay the taxes on the old three-story Victorian where I spent my wild and woolly youth, so there it sits, sagging and forlorn, just down the road a piece, right outside the city limits. Slowly decaying beside the cracked paving of "Old" 441. The bank's problem now—no one of sound mind will make an offer on the place.

I've still got a place to shack. I hang my hat in the back of the diner these days. It suits my carefree lifestyle.

I've owned and operated Roy's Soup and Sandwich, providing a daily fat fix to the cholesterol crowd, for nigh onto twenty-three years. It may seem a dreary life to sophisticated city folk like yourself. But it's all I need—really. Got a roof over my head and a place to sleep, and make enough money off the diner to keep me in staples.

And then there's my movies.

I hoard movies like some folks do books. My collection runs to the classics—old films, black and white mostly (Ted Turner's colorized versions make my ulcer flare). "Casablanca". "From Here to Eternity". Bogart and Hepburn. All of John Wayne's westerns. I'm a member in good standing of the "Flick of the Month" Club, and my films fill two video cases and line the entire back wall of my diner apartment, floor to ceiling.

Sprinkled among the classics are a few of the blockbusters. I'm no prude. But it's the "oldies" I get off on.

I know their stories by heart.

Like I said, there's not much to do in Booster's Roost.

But folks still eat, and that's what gets me up of a morning.

* * * * *

On this particular day I crawled out of bed at the crowing of the rooster, flipped on the radio, and hit the shower. I lathered up, listening with half an ear to the Weather Guy out of Atlanta—"clear and hot on this fine first day of summer, kiddies"—and was in the kitchen firing up the grill within ten minutes, a routine I had long ago mastered in order to steal as much shuteye as possible.

Lucy was already out front, cramming fresh napkins into dispensers and topping off salt shakers, working her ever-present Juicy Fruit like a cow chewing its cud.

Lucy's no bovine, though—more like a doe deer with glasses. She's been my singular waitress for more years than I can remember, and I feel as comfortable with her as a dog with a well-gnawed rawhide bone.

She smiled, blew me a kiss. I scowled, hot around the collar, and set about preparing feed for the Booster's Roost Regulars.

The Regulars were my diehard patrons. They had nothing better to do, it seemed, than to breakfast each morning at my fine establishment, shoot the bull, and solve the problems of the world.

Not that I was complaining, mind. Their money kept me in movies. In fact, most times, theirs was the only breakfast trade I got.

I'd learned long ago to put up with the many eccentricities of the Booster's Roost Regulars—as they, no doubt, had learned to do with mine.

I was scraping hash browns and scrambled eggs off the grill when the first of the Regulars showed his baby face. Stew Colin slouched onto a stool, braced elbows on the counter, and attacked the hotcakes and country ham Lucy had placed there just a moment before. Stew wore his good looks like comfortable shoes, but lately I'd noticed he was beginning to look a mite seedy. Right now his curly black hair was disheveled, and he looked as if he'd slept in his clothes. He'd inherited a bit of money from a favorite aunt, and hadn't worked in over three years. Claimed to be writing a book—but he never seemed to make discernible progress. He spent too much time hanging at the diner, coming on to Lucy.

"Had a look at the sky lately?" Stew said around huge bites of artery-hardening breakfast. "Damnedest thing I've ever seen."

"And good morning to you, too, Stewart Colin," Lucy said. Her voice held more syrup than Stew's plate. Stew leered at her, and she batted her lashes at him from behind glasses as thick as the portholes of a bathysphere.

"What's so strange about the sky?" I said, trying to sound casual. "Weather Guy said it was supposed to be nice out." I didn't really give a rat's ass about the weather. What I wanted was something to divert Stew's attention from Lucy. I didn't like the way Stew always teased her, comin' on and such, but what concern was it of mine? I wasn't her father or anything like that. I had no claim on her. Still, it irked my soul when that pretty boy, smooth-cheeked son of a gun looked at her that way.

Before he could answer, the screen door banged open and Fred-the-Grease-Monkey shuffled in, all joints and angles.

We all called him that—Fred-the-Grease-Monkey. He worked at Casper's Exxon just across from the city limit sign, but that wasn't how he came by that handle. It had to do with a bucket of lard and a chimpanzee from a circus troupe detouring through here when we were kids. I never knew what the real story was, but rumor had it Fred and the chimp had them a merry old time late one night under the big top, after Fred had sampled a gallon of his Granddaddy's blackberry Ripple.

If Fred-the-Grease-Monkey had been in the movies, he'd have been an out-take.

Fred-the-Grease-Monkey sauntered over and slouched at the counter. He wore the same greasy coveralls as always. His hands were dirt splotched. Grime rimmed his fingernails. He grinned, showing tobacco stained teeth.

"The usual, Roy," he said, and cackled.

This was Fred-the-Grease-Monkey's idea of a witty remark, and it never failed to set him off. I sighed.

"Two eggs eyes wide open, four porker skid marks, Texas toast and a glass of moo juice," Lucy recited, and I nodded. Had it memorized by now.

I cracked a couple eggs over the grill and stepped over to the fridge for the milk. I got back just as the Professor shuffled in.

Professor Avery was a retired physics teacher from the state college down Gainesville way. He lived a frugal existence on a meager pension, bunking over at Janey Swan's place. He saw himself as an "elder statesman", and had a deep, melodious voice, somewhat reminiscent of James Earl Jones. Even favored James Earl Jones in some weird way, though he packed about a hundred and fifty less pounds on a whisker-thin frame and was white as the belly of a catfish. The unkempt mane of white hair sticking out every-which-way, however, made him look more like a slightly used version of Mark Twain.

Right now it seemed he fancied himself a budding lawyer.

He reclined pompously in his accustomed place in the corner booth and wooed the assembled throng with brilliant oratory.

"Are you aware," he intoned, "that the sky is green?"

"No shit, Sherlock," Stew said. "How long did it take you to figure that out?"

The professor ignored the critic. "There is an anomaly in the eastern sky," he said. "It gives me a strange feeling of disquiet."

"It's what my Daddy used to call a tornado sky," Lucy said. She slapped a plate overflowing with greasy eggs and ham before the Professor, than skipped nimbly away to avoid the fallout as he dove in, fork first.

Stew held out his coffee cup and Lucy topped it off. He favored her with a lewd wink. I gritted my teeth. Stew looked around and said to no one in particular. "Where's old Quinsy?"

"A no-show," Lucy said, and smacked a Juicy Fruit bubble—no easy feat, believe me. "He's an early bird, but usually drops in by now. Likes to stoke the furnace before finishin' Uncle Sam's business."

"Hell, ain't he up for retirement soon?" Fred-the-Grease-Monkey asked.

"That ain't likely," Stew said. He grinned at Lucy. "Too many fringe benefits in being a mailman."

"Oh, stop it, Stew," Lucy said. She sounded bored, and my spirits rose. "Quinsy probably got tied up at the post office..."

"He got tied up all right," Stew chortled. "Darlene's got him shackled to the bed post with the Chief's handcuffs!"

Lucy giggled. "Chief's going to walk in on them someday and poor ol' Quinsy will be facing early retirement."

Stew shook his head. "Damn, how does he do it? He must be all of sixty. I heard he's got two or three on his string 'sides Darlene—and Mary waiting on him at home." A tinge of irritation had crept into his voice that made me smile. Stew, the lady's man, envious of a philandering senior citizen. It just about made my morning.

"Hey, Professor," Stew yelled. He was never one to be down for long. "Seen any aliens lately?"

The Professor drew himself up, the epitome of dignity, despite the spot of egg yolk on his chin. "I never claimed to see an alien," he said. "What I said was that the world was becoming a strange and alien place."

"It can't be any stranger than what happens around here," Lucy said under her breath.

The Professor caught that, snorted. I sighed and rolled my eyes. Here it comes...

"Stewart," Professor Avery said, "you are living proof of the validity of my theorem."

"What?" said Stew, and Lucy echoed, "Come again?"

"You are a child of Chaos," the Professor explained patiently. "No doubt reared on television and Nintendo within the frenzy of the city. You can be forgiven a certain lack of sustainable attention."

Stew shrugged, no doubt flattered. "Whatever you say, Professor."

The Professor scowled. He was on a roll and not about to stop now. "As to what I said before, the world is an alien place. The evidence is all around us."

"'Specially in Roy's cooking," Lucy snickered.

The Professor made a sweeping motion with a fork loaded with hash browns. The potatoes took flight and spattered against the counter. Avery frowned, looking after the hash browns as if he still might want to eat them.

"Look around you, Stewart", he continued. "Wouldn't you have to say our world is out of control?"

Stew shook his head. "I suppose you'll give examples?" His voice was condescending.

"I can and I will. Take our new road. Forests destroyed, the mountains themselves rent asunder for the sake of moving more autos filled with more people faster and further. And it doesn't stop there. There will be houses and strip malls and industries. Power companies with their obtrusive towers. Erosion, pollution, overpopulation. Rampant, uncontrolled growth everywhere.

"Imagine this on a global scale. Rain forests denuded, rivers choked with silt. Global warming. And ever more people! My God, we are awash in humanity!"

The Professor stood and started to pace, burning with righteous wrath. He spun on his heel, and orange juice from the glass he clutched spattered Lucy's shoes. Lucy groaned.

"Do you know what happens, Stewart, when a species overextends the carrying capacity of its habitat?"

Fred-the-Grease-Monkey grinned. "More'n likely it's kicked out of the house by its daddy, like Stew was."

"NO!" the Professor thundered, then went into a coughing fit as he choked and sputtered on his orange juice. Lucy beat him on the back until he could continue. He shot Stew a triumphant look, orange juice dripping from his chin.

"It self-destructs! If natural checks and balances such as predators are no longer a factor, the species expands exponentially until it destroys itself! Wide spread famine, plague—or mass suicide, like the lemmings. The species can't maintain itself at such a critical mass!"

Stew lifted his feet off the floor. "Gettin' a little deep in here, ain't it?"

For a moment I thought the Professor would stroke out right then and there. When the red had faded from his face and his eyes had ceased bulging he took a deep, shuddering, calming breath and continued.

"Look at it objectively, Stewart. It is happening all around us. The world has exceeded its ability to cope. Nothing is simple anymore. And it's having an affect. Senseless crime has skyrocketed. Natural disasters have burgeoned. Diseases, wars, unrest, strife..."

"Lions and tigers and bears, oh my," I muttered. Lucy rolled her eyes.

"...our world is coming apart at the seams!"

Stew opened his mouth, a hot retort itching to leap off his tongue, when the screen door slapped open and we all jumped. The prodigal Quinsy came shuffling through the door, not bothering to close it after him. Some of my flies, having sampled my cooking, took that opportunity to stage a desperate escape.

I took a long look at Quinsy. He looked as if he had been caught in a compromising position with Darlene, which he had come close to a time or two. He came in all wall-eyed and sweating, gazing off into space, dragging his mail bag behind him.

He stopped in the middle of the room, swaying slightly, as if searching for balance on the deck of a ship. His uniform was dusty and crumpled. Huge ovals of sweat stained his armpits. His lip quivered, and drool slipped unnoticed down his chin.

Lucy blew another Juicy Fruit bubble and gave Quinsy the once over.

"What happened to you? Chief catch you sneaking out of Darlene's bed room and let loose the hounds?"

Quinsy looked at her, seemed to come to himself for the first time. His wide, amazed stare pulled us all in.

"I seen the damnedest thing."

"Not the green sky again," Fred-the-Grease-Monkey snorted. "It's old news, Quinsy."

"What you jawin' about, old man?" Stew said. "Darlene finally let you see her naked?"

We all laughed at that, but Quinsy seemed not to notice.

"You gonna think I've flipped my lid," he said.

"Let me guess," said Fred-the-Grease-Monkey. "You looked in the mirror and saw yourself naked."

Quinsy blinked. "You know that big rock that sits in the right-of-way before Grant's Feed Mill at the edge of town?"

"Ought to," Lucy said. She turned to the counter, started clearing away greasy dishes, already losing interest. "Every boy in Habersham County chalked my name on it at one time or another. Rich loves Lucy. Cal loves Lucy. Juan Valdez loves Lucy..."

"Ernie Millhouse humped Lucy behind the feed mill," Stew sniggered, then ducked as a cold, grease smeared dish rag sailed his way. Lucy smiled saucily and swished her hips. "Eat your heart out, Stewart Colin."

I slapped a slab of bacon on the grill with enough force to flatten it into a greasy mess. "What about that rock, Quinsy?" I shouted over the sizzle of frying pork.

Quinsy looked around, owl-eyed.

"It followed me."

"Hell, Quinsy, that ain't even a good joke," Fred-the-Grease-Monkey said.

"It ain't meant to be," Quinsy said. His eyes suddenly lost that far-off expression and zeroed in on Fred-the-Grease-Monkey like the telescopic sight of a hunting rifle. Fred-the-Grease-Monkey actually cringed back a bit under the intensity of that gaze.

Quinsy took a slow step forward. "The...rock...at...Grant's...Mill...up...and...followed...me. What part of that do you not understand?"

Quinsy's voice rose as he spoke. The last syllable was almost a shriek. Dead quiet hung on his last word. You could have heard a fly doing the back stroke in a bowl of my chicken noodle soup.

"Let me get this straight," the Professor said. His breathing was back to normal now and he raised a bushy eyebrow. "You were making your rounds...?"

"Yeah," said Quinsy. His eyes were feverish.

"...delivering the mail..."

Quinsy slumped onto an empty stool. His mail satchel lay forgotten beside him.

"That's what I do," he said. His voice was quiet now, resigned.

"...and this—rock—accosted you?"

Quinsy sighed. "I never said it 'accosted' me. It just kind of...fell in...behind me, like. And," he swallowed, looking trapped, "followed me down the road."

The corner of Stew's mouth twitched. Lucy stared hard at the floor, pushing a dead hash brown around with her toe. Fred-the-Grease-Monkey suddenly developed a studious interest in the ceiling fan.

I had to bite. "And then...?"

Quinsy slammed his palm down on the counter. A plastic glass fell, bounced across the floor. Lucy jumped and squealed, Fred-the-Grease-Monkey yelped, and Stew doubled over, snorting and blowing, trying too-hard not to laugh.

"Gawd durn it, I saw what I saw. I was strollin' down the shoulder of "Old" 441, minding my own dad-blamed business. I crossed the road, slipped the mail in Grant's box, then headed over to that pansy-pink mailbox Bishop put up. I'd just opened the door when I heard this sucking sound..."

"Darlene follow you out there, Quinsy?" Stew asked with a sly grin. Fred-the-Grease-Monkey hooted and Lucy gnawed the side of her hand, her face bright red with suppressed mirth.

Quinsy glared murder at them. "...and I turned around...I swear to God, that big rock just eased itself out of the ground, kind of shook itself like a dog after a good bath. Dirt flew everywhere.

"I backed up. Think I dropped Bishop's mail. Hell, it was all bills, anyway. I took a few steps back, thinkin' I was having one of those LSD flashbacks even though I never touched the stuff back in the sixties. That rock, it kind of rolled towards me a ways, and stopped.

"I backed up a few more steps, all the time keepin' my eye on that there rock. It rolls towards me a piece and stops again. Like it was waitin'."

"Maybe it was stoned," Stew said, and that set off another wave of laughter which, in light of subsequent events, I am ashamed to say I participated in.

Quinsy shot Stew a lethal look. "The damn rock followed me. I went on with my rounds. Couldn't whistle, my mouth was so dry. Kept glancing around. That rock followed right along behind like a dog on a leash."

"And where is it now?" Lucy asked.

Quinsy took a slow turn around the room, his eyes meeting all of ours. There was fear, hope, and resignation reflected in those muddy eyes, along with a queer sense of triumph.

"Right outside, Missy. It stayed outside, like a good rock."

We all looked at him, then rushed the door. Stew and Fred-the-Grease-Monkey stormed out the door, giggling, Lucy tight on their heels. I shut down the grill, and followed reluctantly. Some sixth sense, like something from the "X-Files", was clambering for my attention. Suddenly I wasn't so eager to step out that door.

I reached the sill just as Stew and Fred-the-Grease-Monkey backpedaled so fast they almost trampled Lucy beneath them.

On the broken side walk in front of the diner sat a large rock.

I recognized it immediately as the rock at Grant's Mill. How Quinsy had managed to get it here I didn't know, but it must have taken a shitload of effort to do so.

The rock was huge. Shaped sort of like a fat hog, it had to weigh in at well over a ton. I could see the stained, off-color soil line where fully half of the rock had rested below ground. How Quinsy had excavated around it, managed to wrestle it onto a flat-bed truck, haul it over here and unload it without any of us seeing him was a wonder in itself. The effort he'd gone to for a practical joke astounded me.

"God in Heaven, Quinsy," Lucy whispered. "How the Hell did you get that thing out here?"

Quinsy came up beside her, laid a hand softly on her shoulder. "I told you," he said patiently, like explaining death to a child. "It..."

"...followed me!" Stew and Fred-the-Grease-Monkey chimed in, sniggering.

I glanced up the road. Heat waves shimmered in the distance, but I could make out a faint, meandering trail, alternating from the grassy shoulder to the asphalt edge. Where the trail touched the road, the asphalt was cracked and scarred as if by some horrendous weight.

A covey of early risers, mostly clerks from Hanson's Mercantile across the street, circled the rock, amazement written on their faces. Joe Abbott, the barber, was there, as was Janey Swan, octogenarian owner of Booster's Roost's only boarding house (she called the weary old building a "bed and breakfast"). They stared at the rock, owl-eyed.

"It was a good joke, Quinsy," I said. I had always heard one should speak quietly and clearly when appeasing a madman. "But you shouldn't have dragged that thing into town. The city council's gonna have a conniption fit when they see what you've done to their road."

Quinsy shook his head and rolled his eyes heavenward. "Oh yea of little faith," he said, "yea see but don't damn believe."

He looked at me and I cringed under the burning brand of his eyes. "I reckon I'll have to show you, Roy my boy."

He stepped off the porch and onto the splintered concrete walk and shuffled over to the rock with a gingerliness reserved for mad dogs and poisonous snakes. And suddenly I didn't want him to do this, to further make a fool of himself in front of his friends. Hell, I liked Quinsy, had known him all my life. I lifted a hand half-heartedly, let it fall.

"Shit, Quinsy, you don't have to..."

But Quinsy paid me no mind, only walked out into the street. All his attention was centered on the stone.

"Here, rock," he said. "Come on, boy." Without a backward glance, he walked away.

And the rock, like an obedient hound, rolled after him.

This time Lucy went down, landing hard on her rump, scrambling to get out from under the boots and worn boat shoes of Fred-the-Grease-Monkey and Stew. The covey of early risers gasped and split asunder, rapidly back-pedaleding towards the safety of the surrounding storefronts. As for me, my mouth dropped open, and I stared bug-eyed at the rock romping along at Quinsy's heels like a carefree pup as the mailman hung a short loop and sauntered back to where we stood, rooted to the spot under the sickly green sky.

Quinsy faced us, his eyes feverish. Sweat poured from his face, stained his shirt. The relief reflected in his eyes was matched only by the superstitious fear mirrored in our own.

The rock had heeled, waiting patiently beside Quinsy's left leg like a well-trained bird dog. I wondered vaguely if Quinsy would toss it a Milk Bone.

"You see," Quinsy said. "I'm not crazy, Roy. I'm not."

"No," I said. I think I was in shock. "You're sane as anyone else here—which might not be saying a whole hell of a lot."

Sudden movement tugged at the corner of my eye and I tore my gaze from the rock to stare up the street. A beat up pickup truck was tearing down the length of "Old" 441, weaving crazily, tires squealing. Dumbfounded, we watched as it slid to a stop in a cloud of dust and burnt rubber fumes. Its right bumper nudged the rock. The rock eased to one side.

Shit, I thought. A rock with manners.

The rust-pitted door screeched open and Salvador Mendoza staggered out, clutching the door frame for dear life. Sal was Martin and Marion Hancock's hired hand. Martin Hancock owned the largest working farm in Habersham County.

Sal leaned heavily on the truck bed. He stared at us from haunted eyes.

"I need help," he panted. "The senor and senora..." He gagged, and his hand flew up, covered his mouth.

"Now what?" muttered the Professor, and I shot him a withering look.

Lucy stepped quickly over to Sal, studiously avoiding the now placid rock. "What is it, Sal? What's happened?"

Sal looked up the road. "It's..." He licked his lips, avoiding our eyes. "You will think I am lying, senorita."

"Are the Hancocks in trouble?" Lucy asked.

Sal passed a hand over his face, shuddered. "You could say that...you could, yes."

"Hell, we better git the Chief," Fred-the-Grease-Monkey said. He looked at me for support.

"Fred's right," I said. "Chief can handle it without us gettin' in the way."

"No!" Quinsy almost shouted. A red blush crept up his neck. "No." He flashed a weak smile. "We don't need the Chief to look into this. You know the Chief, he's busy and all..."

"In this burg?" Stew snorted.

"...lot of responsibility, you know, and maybe it's best we don't hand him this, too, what with everything else and all..."

Lucy rolled her eyes. "My God, Quinsy. Your pecker's gonna' get you pickled some day."

Quinsy blushed a deep red and tugged at his collar.

"How 'bout it, Sal?" I said. "What's goin' on at the Hancock place?"

Sal swallowed. "I will have to show you."

"I was afraid you'd say that." I crossed over to Sal, pried his fingers from the truck bed. "I'll drive."

* * * * *

The truck needed shocks in a bad way. We bounced and jostled over the rutted dirt drive to the Hancock place. Stew, Fred-the-Grease-Monkey, the Professor, and Quinsy rattled around in the bed. Lucy sat up front, clutching the arm rest as a drowning man grasps a life preserver. Sal slumped between us like a melted candle.

I glanced in the cracked rear view mirror. The rock trailed along behind, having no trouble keeping up. Probably didn't want to be separated from Quinsy.

I'd heard of chicks, ducks, geese and the like developing an offspring-like attachment to the first thing they saw when they hatched, even if the object of their initial fixation was, say, canine—or human. Maybe this was something similar. The rock woke up, spied Quinsy, instinctively fixated on the mailman as a father figure, and...

And listen to yourself, you ape-shit sonofabitch! This line of reasoning is crazy. I squeezed my eyes shut, opened them wide, and concentrated on my driving.

Outside the dirty windshield, the sky roiled and churned like pea green soup in a blender. I scanned the horizon for tornadoes.

"Come on, Sal," Lucy coaxed. There was a new radiance about her, I noticed, a liveliness I hadn't seen in a long time. Lucy was enjoying this. After the stifling sameness of life in Booster's Roost, the excitement of anything out of the ordinary was infectious. I marveled at her glow, the fire in her eyes, the color in her throat and cheeks, and felt a stirring in my groin. I fought off the feeling with an effort. No time for that now.

"What happened, Sal? What's going on?"

"The animals," Sal whispered. "Senor Hancock..." He swallowed, looked at me from wide eyes. "I go out to feed the animals, like I do every morning. I open the barn door and there are no animals. I scratch my head. Where are they? I go outside and look around. The barnyard is deserted. There are no animals."

"Where was Hancock?" I shouted over the straining engine.

"He...he is in the house. I leave the barnyard, go to the house. I go inside. The senora is cooking breakfast, I think. I smell sausage. I go into the kitchen and...and..."

Sal's hands fluttered up to his mouth again, but too late. He retched, and vomit spewed between his clenched fingers, adorning our shoes with chunks of his late breakfast.

"Oh, shit!" Lucy wailed. "Those are my good Clinics!" She forced the window down, breathing deep droughts of fresh air.

Sal looked at me. Flecks of puke adhered to his lower lip. His breath was foul. His eyes looked as if they had stared into Hell.

"Do you know of Orwell's book, senor? 'Animal Farm?'"

"I saw the movie," I muttered. I wanted him to take that back. I was afraid I knew where he was going, and the thought scared the Hell out of me.

I'd been aware for some time of subtle movement all around us. The loose gravel scattered around the edge of the drive seemed to move of its own accord, as if a stiff wind were stirring the rocks restlessly. Small stones skittered across the drive like lizards, intent on unimaginable errands.

There was a glint of pink through the trees. I stared. Blinked.

A fluffy pink cloud about the size of a Samsonite suitcase floated among the branches of a pin oak. Another rose from a low area and hovered, as if contemplating which way to go. Studying its surroundings, I thought, and then wondered where that thought had sprung from.

The clouds looked wrong, somehow. Like swirls of cotton candy endowed with Frankensteinian life.

I watched the clouds in the rear view mirror. They floated towards one another and stopped, almost touching. They seemed to be having a casual conversation.

Yeah, right.

I concentrated on coaxing the truck around a tight turn. When I looked back, the clouds were no longer in sight. But something about them disturbed me greatly. I shivered.

I started to ask Sal another question when the truck slewed around a bend and the Hancock barnyard opened before us.

As Sal had said, the barnyard was empty as a beer keg come Sunday morning.

I braked hard and the truck slid around and came to a rocking rest.

"Jesus, Roy," a voice whined from the bed. "You trying to kill us or what?"

We climbed out warily. Sal clutched at my arm and I shook him off.

Stew strolled over and peered into the dusky barn. "Nothin' in here. Looks like it's been used recently, though."

I glanced back down the drive, feeling an uneasy urgency.

"Check the house," the Professor suggested.

We climbed the wide steps and opened the front screen. The scent of sausage permeated the air, a scent somehow too sweet, almost cloying. Fred-the-Grease-Monkey and I exchanged glances.

"Stay behind me," I told Lucy gallantly. She snorted and pushed past, into the kitchen.

And screamed.

I charged into the kitchen and slid to a stop. My knees went weak, and the bile rose in my throat.

Two hogs sprawled in chairs at the kitchen table. Their dark, beady eyes, almost lost in rolls of fat, stared at me. Both were dressed in stained overalls. They held forks clumsily in what can only be described as vestigial hands. Three thick, loathsome fingers entwined around each utensil. They ate busily from plates piled high with steaming sausage, slurping and chomping, bits of their breakfast spilling down their chinny-chin-chins.

A huge cow clomped across the floor on its hind legs. The cow wore an apron stretched around her girth, and held more steaming platters of sausage she had, apparently, just taken from the stove. Her eyes glittered with malevolent intelligence.

"What the hell are you doing here?" one of the hogs grunted.

"You don't belong here," said the cow reproachfully.

"If you know what's good for you, you'll get the hell out of here," the second hog said around a bristled mouth packed full of sausage.

From the counter, next to a bloody meat grinder, the severed heads of Martin and Marion Hancock stared at us, as if damning us for our late arrival.

"What the hell," said the first hog. He held out a plate of sausage. "Care to join us for breakfast?"

I can't remember who screamed the loudest, Lucy or me. We tore out of the room, frantic to escape that house of horrors. Stew had time to say only "What...?" before I bowled into him, knocking him sprawling across the threshold. Lucy planted a vomit stained Clinic in his belly on the way out and he gasped, winded.

The Professor and Quinsy picked up on our panic and scampered out after us, stomping Stew in the process. Only Fred-the-Grease-Monkey had the presence of mind to grab Stew by the collar and drag him out of there.

We huddled on the far side of the truck, sick and shivering. I frantically fumbled in my jeans pockets.

"The keys! Where the hell are the keys!" I shouted.

Lucy jumped in the truck and checked the ignition.

"They're not here!" she said. She slid across the seat and was on me in a second, grabbed me by the collar and shook me like a bulldog shakes a luckless cat.

"What did you do with the keys, you dumb shit!" Her eyes were wild. "We've got to get out of here!"

The Professor stared at Fred-the-Grease-Monkey, dumbfounded. Stew gasped from where he sprawled on the ground, his face gray.

Our rock rolled over and rubbed against Quinsy's leg, looking for attention. "Not now," Quinsy snapped. The rock rolled away, moping.

Lucy stuck her pert little nose in my face. "Where...are...the...keys?"

Flustered, I pointed a shaking finger towards the farm house.

"In there?" I said helpfully. "They must have fallen out of my pocket when I ran into Stew."

Lucy shoved me. "Go get them," she snarled.

I didn't know Lucy could snarl. It might have turned me on in different circumstances.

I pulled up short. "You mean, back in there?"

"For the love of God and all that's holy!" Lucy shouted. "I'll go get them myself!"

But before she could move Fred-the-Grease-Monkey said wonderingly, "Would you look at that?"

With one accord we turned to where he pointed.

The two pink clouds were floating up the drive, nosing along the lane like dogs on a scent. Every so often they would stop and nuzzle up to one another as if communicating. Then they would come on in that sinister way that sent shivers up my spine. My head cleared abruptly.

"Stay here." It was my turn to snarl. Lucy stopped, surprised.

I ran around the truck and darted up the steps. Gluttonous smacks came from the kitchen, accompanied by loud burps and belches. I eased the screen door open and slipped inside on my hands and knees, feeling around in the murky darkness along the floor.

Nothing.

Frantic, I swept the hardwood floor in ever widening circles, alternating glances towards the kitchen and the screen door. Someone—one of the hogs, no doubt—farted loudly from the kitchen, accompanied by a calliope of snorting oinks that I realized with a chill was laughter.

My hand brushed something that tinkled faintly and I closed my fingers gratefully over the key ring.

I scrambled out of there, fast.

"In the truck, now!" I snapped, then stopped short, cursing.

Fred-the-Grease-Monkey was standing before one of the clouds. It had nosed up to him, checking him out. Fred smiled, looking at me from eyes filled with the wonder of childhood.

"Get this," he said. "What is this thing? Looks like my Mama's powder puff!"

The cloud nuzzled him, snuffling like a hound dog around a fox den. It seemed confused, however, uncertain. It hesitated, drew back a mite.

Then Fred boo-booed. He reached out a hand and touched it.

The cloud went blood red, a crimson thunder head. It snapped out at Fred-the-Grease-Monkey, attaching itself to his fingers.

"What the hell..." Fred started, and then the cloud was working its way up his arm.

"Hey, what are you doin'?" Fred yelled, the beginnings of panic tingeing his voice. He started to dance around, swinging his arm lustily. "Hey, that hurts!" The cloud ignored him, busily shinnying up his arm and enveloping his chest.

Fred-the-Grease-Monkey screamed, his face chalk-white. He jiggled and danced like a puppet on a tangled string, slapping with his good hand at the angry red cloud. The cloud was growing, now, becoming larger, bloated, and now Fred's other hand became entwined in the fluffy softness of the clouds not-so-silver lining. He screamed, again and again, as the cloud slowly enveloped his entire body.

We stared, horrified, as the blood-red cloud covered Fred-the-Grease-Monkey from head to foot.

Fred was gone. The crimson cloud jittered and shook, like a handful of alley cats fighting in a burlap sack.

And then, suddenly, the cloud released him.

It moved away, sluggish, sated, the angry red fading to a satisfied pink. It looked bloated, and if a cloud could sigh contentedly, this one did. It drifted slowly to the ground and settled there like a tick fallen from a dogs back, plump and jolly, at peace with the world.

I gagged.

Fred-the-Grease-Monkey, or what was left of him, swayed like a sapling before a stiff wind. Most of his flesh was gone, vanished, as if he were a buffalo chicken wing lounging in stomach acid. What skin remained hung in loose strips. As we watched, one shriveled ear sloughed off and fell on the ground with a slight pat.

Fred-the-Grease-Monkey said, "Ah don't freel sho goud."

A finger came loose and slowly separated from his hand, descending lazily to the ground on a stretching tendon.

He blinked owlishly. His lower lip slid down his chest.

"Uh, maybre icht's nod asch bad asch id sheems," he slurred reasonably.

Stew swallowed. "Maybe it's a wee fuckin' bit worse than it seems," he muttered.

Fred-the-Grease-Monkey slowly raised his hands and looked at them.

"Ah, shid," he said. Then his right arm separated at the shoulder and plopped tiredly at his feet. His left knee buckled and he went down. He opened his mouth to speak and it kept opening, his jaw sagging down to the ground, the mouth stretching comically. Then, with a sound like a pneumatic door closing, he collapsed all at once, his body folding in on itself.

He lay there, deflating like the Wicked Witch in the "Wizard of Oz", slowly bubbling and oozing before our horrified eyes.

He was no longer recognizable as Fred-the-Grease-Monkey, I thought. I giggled. Now he was Fred-the-Grease-Spot.

The Professor reached out, shook me out of impending darkness.

"Uh, the other one's coming this way."

I looked around. The second cloud, not to be denied, was rushing towards us with recognizable eagerness.

"Get in the truck!" I shouted, but the others were frozen, staring in fascination at the swiftly approaching cloud.

I grabbed Lucy and threw her in the cab, shoved the Professor in after her. I reached for Stew and shot a glance at the cloud. The thing was accelerating towards us, about a foot off the ground, and I knew with a gut wrenching certainty that it would be on us before I could bully my remaining friends into the bed.

A gray blur tore across the barnyard with a rumble like a small earthquake. Quinsy's rock plowed into the cloud, a sentient avalanche. The cloud squeaked like a mouse under the claws of a cat as the rock rolled over it, squashing it like a steam roller running over road kill. The squeal cut off abruptly and the rock passed on, leaving in its wake a flattened shape vaguely conforming to the shape of the cloud, a cartoon figure smashed flat into the ground.

I threw Stew into the truck bed. Quinsy clambered into the back with an agility that belied his years, and Sal dived into Stew's lap, expelling his breath once again in a long whoosh. I caught a glance of the rock returning for a second pass as I twisted the key and gunned the engine.

The tired old truck lurched into gear and lumbered down the drive.

The screen door banged open and one of the hogs rushed out onto the porch, moving fast for something so fat. He waddled down the steps and into the drive, a shotgun in his new hands. He miscalculated, however, and slid to a stop in the drive, right in front of the truck. He threw up the shotgun, and for an instant I found myself staring into its black maw. Then the truck's bug-stained grill struck the hog with a beefy—or porky—smack. The hog squealed like a stuck pig and disappeared beneath the bald tires.

I stomped the pedal to the metal and the truck lurched over the hog and kept on going, gamely giving all it had.

We tore down the drive. My eyes were glued to the rear view mirror, but no new horror appeared behind us.

Small stones danced in my peripheral vision.

"This is not happening, this is not real," Lucy chanted. Her doe eyes were huge behind her glasses.

"I think," the Professor whispered, "that reality has taken a back seat here." He pointed at the sky.

The sickening pea green was gone, replaced by a slate-gray pallor that had slipped in from the east when we weren't looking. There was an electricity in the air that bothered me considerably.

"What's wrong with the sky?" Lucy asked. Maybe she was a mind reader. Nothing would have surprised me now.

Lightning forked down from gunmetal gray clouds. Other clouds, pink and fluffy, darted among the trees, trying to pace the truck. If we ran out of gas, or one of the bald tires gave up the ghost...

I put that thought out of my mind.

We reached the main drag, turned left. The truck shuddered, plodding like an old man.

Shaken, we lumbered back to town and into a scene out of nightmare.

Bodies littered the street. Hanson's Mercantile was ablaze, but the flames burned with a slow lethargy, as if frigid, half-frozen. I swerved to avoid two dogs fighting in the street, which shouldn't have been alarming except that the dogs stood on their hind legs and fought with knives.

I braked the truck before the cafe and slumped over the wheel. I couldn't stop shaking.

Sal, Quinsy, and Stew piled out. The Professor shouldered open the warped door and climbed wearily down. Lucy followed. I slid out last, surveying the putrid sky.

A scream warbled from across the street and a woman staggered into the twilight, a gauzy pink mass adhering to her back. Janey Swan. She stumbled up the road and disappeared into an alley.

More cloud shapes drifted over the buildings, searching for snacks.

I noticed movement at our feet and glanced down. A stone about the size of a Jack Russell terrier was snuffling around Quinsy's calf. While I watched, it leaned against the mailman's leg and gently began to rub, up and down, faster and faster.

Quinsy looked down. "Jesus Christ," he said in disgust. He shook his leg and the stone scampered off. "It was humping my leg."

A crunching sound drew our attention. Quinsy's rock rolled up to us and stopped, waiting expectantly. A faint pink stained one side.

The Professor looked at me, his face pinched, haunted. His pompousness had long since deserted him. "What should we do now?" he said.

Quinsy broke in. "Something bad is coming," he said. "Something awful."

He looked at me. "I'm goin' home. To be with my Mary."

I stared around, dazed. The sky was almost totally consumed by an ink-black stain. Jagged lightning flashes speared the ground. Thunder growled. Weirdly, I could see stars in the black, roiling mass of the sky, but they looked strange, distorted, unfamiliar.

Stars not of this universe.

This is like a scene from "Sliders", I thought. Only there's no where left to slide to.

"What's happened?" Lucy whispered. "Has the world gone mad?"

The Professor looked at us. "There seems to be some kind of distortion in the time-space continuum. The world as we know it is somewhere it should not be."

"Spit it out in English, Doc," Stew said.

The Professors eyes looked fevered, bruised. "Don't you see, Stewart? Reality is collapsing around us. Things are coming apart at the seams."

"You're crazy," Lucy said. She didn't look as if she believed it, however.

"Critical mass," the Professor whispered. "The universe can no longer expend the energy necessary to sustain intricate organisms or complex systems."

It was getting increasingly hard to hear over the howl of the wind.

He shivered, looked at me. "Look at it this way. The universe came home from a hard day at work and decided to slip into something more comfortable."

Stew reached out, grabbed his arms. "What the Hell are you ranting about?" he shouted.

"It's just that things have become so frantic, so hectic, so complicated...the universe can't handle it anymore. It...stressed out."

"You're crazy," Lucy said again, this time with conviction.

The Professor shook his head. "Things are changing, adapting. Everything is being simplified, economized—pared to the bone. Becoming...less."

"I don't think I want to hear this," Sal moaned. He covered his ears with callused palms.

"It's like this," the Professor said. "The universe belched. And we're caught in the after taste."

Quinsy was less eloquent but more direct. "It's the end of time, you dickhead. The Lord's done come back."

I tuned them both out. I didn't need their explanations because I knew what was happening, knew the real reason why everything was going to Hell in a hand basket. The real reason was—that there was no reason. This was no movie, no celluloid fantasy where all the questions wound up answered, the whole works neatly wrapped and packaged in ninety minutes—or two hours at most. This was life, in all its cumbersome, untidy ...unreasonable... flesh, where shit happens, things change, and, God help us, it don't have to make no sense.

"What is going to happen?" Sal said.

"Who knows?" the Professor said. "However," he smiled, "I intend to follow Quinsy's advice. I am going home. I intend to lock myself in my room with a good book and a bottle of brandy and await come-what-may." He took off down the road in an old-man's shuffling sprint.

"Come on, Sal," Stew said. "Let's get out of the weather." He looked almost happy.

Stew waved, and he and Sal ran in a half-crouch towards Stew's place down the road.

Quinsy looked around nervously. "Ah, see you," he said, and dashed away. The rock dutifully followed.

Wind shrieked as Lucy and I bolted into the diner. I locked the door and, as an afterthought, shoved the jukebox against it. Lightning slithered around us, dancing along the door frame. The air was charged with electricity, and a blue nimbus glowed before my eyes.

"Hurry!" Lucy cried, and I ran over to where she had crammed herself under the far booth. I ducked down and took her in my arms. She had lost her glasses somewhere and I looked down into her terrified eyes.

We curled together, scared out of our minds.

Thunder rolled, deafening, and lightning sizzled, one bolt tripping over the heels of another. A soft roar filled my ears, grew louder, more urgent. I squeezed my eyes shut but could still see the blue nimbus superimposed on my eyelids.

From somewhere far away came the sound of shattering glass. A god-awful howl filled the air, like feedback from an amplifier.

The last thing I remembered for some time was that my nose was starting to itch.

* * * * *

I don't recall when the storm ended. Consciousness drifted back like flotsam on a warm sea. When at last I opened my eyes, dazzling sunlight flooding through the windows momentarily blinded me.

We had experienced twisters before, though we were nowhere near the so-called tornado alley. This had to have been the mother of all twisters, though. What else could it have been?

I raised my head, took a cautious sniff. The air smelled clean and fresh scrubbed, as if newly minted. I stood on trembling legs, testing my limbs. Everything seemed to work as it should.

I reached down and pulled a dazed Lucy to her feet.

We shuffled to the door. Light streamed inside through the shattered doorway. I clawed aside the remnants of the jukebox and climbed outside.

Down the street a door banged open. A figure stepped onto the boardwalk. I recognized Stew gazing around owl-eyed. My memory seemed disjointed. Hadn't Stew been with someone else?

My mind was fuzzy. I thought I remembered strange, frightening things that hovered just at the edge of consciousness. Try as I might, however, I couldn't pin them down.

Someone touched my arm. I glanced around. Lucy looked at me, her eyes glowing. "Satisfied?" she smiled.

"What do you mean?"

"You said nothing ever happens around here. Don't say that again, okay?"

I grinned. My nose twitched, savoring the scent of her. I realized that what I wanted now was to get to know Lucy much, much better.

"I think I jinxed us," I said. She grinned, flashing her canines.

It turned me on.

"There's Quinsy," Lucy said. "Looks like he survived, little worse for wear."

We strolled over to where Quinsy stood, paws on hips, surveying something laying in the road.

"Hey, you guys," he waved. "Look at this."

We strolled over. Idly, I watched a pink scavenger cloud settle over the carcass of a draft horse, still strapped in harness amidst the wreckage of a wagon. The cloud settled over the dead horse, shimmied a bit, and floated off, sated. Nothing remained of the horse but a faint outline.

We stopped next to Quinsy and stared down at what he was looking at.

It was our city limits sign, bent and battered but still legible.

It said, "Welcome to Rooster's Boost. Population 88."

"Damn, that must have blown a helluva long way," Quinsy said.

"Hey, don't sweat it," I said. "It can be replaced." I swept an arm around. Folks were beginning to emerge from where they had taken refuge. "It can all be rebuilt. Hell," I grinned, "nothing ever happens in Rooster's Boost."

Quinsy's pet rock rolled up and nuzzled the sign. Quinsy petted it absently, his claws tapping a nervous rhythm on its pitted surface. Hell, I thought. Maybe I'll get one of those. No mess, no bother. Didn't even have to feed 'em.

Wonder if Lucy would like that?

Right there, in the ruin of the street, under the shadow of the virgin forest spreading unbroken for miles around our battered little town, I took Lucy in my arms. Her fur was warm and soft under my paws. Her pale green, slit eyes smiled into my own. Dainty ears, lightly pointed, twitched seductively. Her whiskers quivered in anticipation.

I wrapped my tail around her possessively and purred.

I had a lot to purr about.

Nothing ever happened in Rooster's Boost.

Except, just maybe, a wedding.

The Last Angel

In the Year of Carrion, six hundred and fifty-four winters after the Arinian Wars, Raun of Atlahna huddled close to a waning camp fire. The flames danced, wafted by a strengthening wind from the north.

Raun blinked, mesmerized by the blood seeping through his bandages and falling, a slow drop at a time, to patter on the granite where he sat.

The wind scratched across the rock and Raun shivered. He laid his naked sword, stained red from the blood of the forest ghouls, across his thighs, where it would be close at hand.

Kin placed another plaster across the diagonal gashes in Raun's chest, and glanced anxiously around. "Wind's picking up. The Eaters fear a Long Wind coming. They won't follow—but we need to find shelter or..."

"I was thinking," Raun whispered. He stared into the fire, eyes dull with shock. "That I'll just rest right here."

Kin swore. "That's no way to talk." His hands shook as he wrapped gauze around Raun's torso and tied off a knot. He shot a glance at the brow of the hill, where a tongue of the setting sun licked the horizon. A tall man, his black hair flying free with the wind, stood on the cliff's edge, staring down into the dark forest below.

"There's no give in him," Kin whispered. "He is so..." Words failed him.

"Certain?" Raun smiled, then grimaced as a lance of pain flicked across his pectoral muscles. "Mordock knows, Kin. You understand? Sure as death, he knows—or believes he does, anyway."

"Here he comes," Kin whispered, and pulled a protesting Raun to his feet. Raun leaned on Kin's broad shoulders and watched his friend come down the hill, cloak billowing behind him.

And wondered what it was like to wear the armor of such conviction.

* * * * *

Mordock helped him into the saddle. Raun's vision blurred, and he clung tight to the horse's mane. Mordock mounted, and took the reins of Raun's horse just as the sun disappeared over the horizon.

"Tell me again why we're out here," Raun whispered.

Mordock smiled. "Because there's nothing left for us in Atlahna but Plague-death, and we need to ply our trade. The Eaters are expanding their territory, and they don't need Trackers to find them food. To them, we are food. But mostly because my Eye told me we should come this way. Somewhere out here, a miracle awaits us."

With an effort, Raun straightened in the saddle and took the reins from Mordock's hands. The wind swept over them with a wail like a lost soul. From somewhere far away came an answering howl, full of black need.

What Raun wanted most was to just lie down and close his eyes. For a little while.

But he had promised Mordock.

I have your back. We stand against the dark. Together.

"Kin says we're on a wild goose chase," Raun said.

"Kin is a youth yet. If he has learned anything of the world we survive in, he should know that nothing is impossible."

"So you say."

Mordock stared at him from eyes grey as pewter. His third Eye—centered in his forehead—also stared.

Raun's skin dimpled under the scrutiny of Mordock's mystic Eye, but he wasn't really bothered. He'd felt nothing of consequence for so long he doubted Mordock could glean anything new from him. Despair left little room for other emotions.

"There's a storm coming," Mordock said. "Within the hour. We need to ride. No telling what may come with the wind."

Raun's wounds still leaked under the bandages, and his muscles ached from the running battle they'd fought with the Eaters of Men. Pains of the flesh could be endured—he'd had plenty of practice. The ache in his soul, however...he was beginning to think it was permanent.

They'd lost Balyn in that last melee. Balyn, with the easy laugh and the optimistic outlook. Now so much fodder for the forest ghouls.

Where's your optimism now, Balyn?

"Come on, Kin," Raun said, and touched heels to his horse. Kin fell in behind him as Mordock rode up on his flank.

"You know I must do this, my friend. But once again – you don't have to come."

"There are no miracles, Mordock. Only the legacy of the Maelstrom. And the bones of lost loved ones."

"Neither were there dragons, Raun. Not before the Maelstrom. Now...can't take a step without tripping over one."

"You chase a dream—a fairy tale. Is it a true-vision, Mordock? Or just misplaced hope?"

"My Eye has Shown me a possibility. We can make a difference. Turn the tide. You must have faith, my friend. That there is a way."

A harrowing scene flashed across Raun's mind. Black bodies, bloated, crawling with flies. He closed his eyes tight. "Just another way to die," he whispered.

Kin rode up beside them. "Almost twilight. What are we going to do?"

Raun flicked the reins, and the horse twisted his head around and snapped at him with a ragged beak. His grandfather had told him once that horses used to have teeth. That before the Maelstrom they had once fed on grass.

Don't ask me, Kin. I no longer know. And don't really care.

He felt Mordock's gaze touch him, questioning.

"Which way, Raun? Where to from here?"

Raun's smile felt more like a grimace. "Why not, my friend? You believe in miracles? Then let us find out."

Mordock kicked his horse into a canter. Kin followed close behind. Raun stared at the clouds scuttling grey-black across the sky. The tree tops shivered.

Wind coming. Sometimes, nowadays, bad things came with the wind.

Reluctantly, he moved out after the others.

North. Into the teeth of that demon wind.

* * * * *

Storm winds surged outside the cave entrance. From the relative safety of the interior, Raun huddled close to their new fire and stared out into the night.

"Gives me the creeps," Kin said. He hugged himself.

"Not just the wind," Raun said. "Listen."

Underneath the moaning of the wind there came a chittering sound, a mad clacking. Kin paled. "What is that?"

Raun motioned towards the opening, where the night pressed in. "Step out and see for yourself."

"Wind Stalkers," Mordock said. He was staring into the black recesses at the back of the cave, only half paying attention. "They hunt in packs. You never see one outside a heavy wind—it masks their approach." He turned, looked at Kin. "You don't want to be caught out with them around."

Kin eyed the caves dark mouth and swallowed.

A sudden commotion brought all their attention to the entrance. There came a clatter of hooves on stone. A curse. Steel rang on rock, and a man screamed, high and keen. Then horses were crowding the entrance, wild-eyed and blowing. Their steaming bulk momentarily plotted out the misshapen shadowy forms flitting just outside the firelight.

Three men fought their frightened mounts to a standstill and vaulted from their saddles to face the night with drawn swords. The screams from outside reached a new pitch, and Raun could hear the terror and despair in them—and then they were cut off with a harsh finality.

One of the men approached. He gripped a broadsword in one big hand, and bled from a shallow cut on his cheek. He shot a wary glance at Raun, then gestured to the cave entrance.

"Caught in the storm," he said. "Damn Stalkers jumped us. Pulled Nendeker down, carried him off. We saw the glow from your fire, and just made the cave. Wind's thick with the bastards. Lucky for us they won't hunt out of it."

Raun sighed. Death was everywhere. There was no true refuge.

He spoke the words his grandfather had taught him, though he no longer believed they mattered.

"You are welcome, friend. We have your back. Together we will stand against the night."

* * * * *

The newcomers crowded around the fire. Raun noted the worn leathers, the crossbows slung over broad backs, and the three-bar diagonal tattoos imprinted above their cheekbones that denoted the mercenary caste. The stocky man noticed Raun's attention, gave a brief nod. "I am Talcrow, from the Hinderlands. For all of us, I thank you for your grant of sanctuary."

"Don't mention it."

"We were heading for Atlahna when we ran into some refugees fleeing the Plague. Decided we hadn't lost anything there, and turned north. That's Seth, on the right. Lyman—Rooster, we call him—is the big fellow."

Raun gestured at the cross bow. "Looking for work?"

Talcrow grinned. "Don't have to look far. It usually finds us."

He went back to the fire and Raun studied the trio. Talcrow seemed normal enough, but his two men were mutants. Seth's skin was covered with glittering translucent scales as beautiful as any dragons. He noticed Raun's attention, grinned, and performed a little dance step.

Lyman was stranger still. He was a giant, almost eight feet tall. A second, fully functional set of arms sprouted from his side, and his crown was adorned with a fleshy crimson crest. There was no doubt where his nickname came from.

Rooster's attention never wavered from the mouth of the cave.

Raun had nothing against mutants. They were the norm. And some mutations, like Roosters extra limbs, could prove beneficial. Others, however, resulted in throwbacks—or worse.

The Maelstrom was responsible for the mutations, as well as the infliction of stillbirths he'd heard affected some regions, and the accelerated aging he'd witnessed in others.

And the Plagues.

Nobody had believed the Arinians would use the stockpiled weapons, his grandfather had told him. The dirty bombs. The chemical—and biological—poisons. Or that the Capitalists would retaliate. The resulting conflagration—the Maelstrom—had finished what the Arinians had started. And was still finishing it.

Mordock emerged from the shadows at the back of the cave, startling Raun. He'd never seen his friend leave.

"You need to see this," Mordock said. He turned and disappeared behind an outcropping of rock and Raun followed. He saw Talcrow look up from the fire, then stand and start their way.

Mordock had fabricated a torch from dried cedar limbs he'd found just inside the cave, and the flickering flames dimly illuminated a cramped space behind the boulders. A man lay on the rock floor, curled into a fetal position. A profusion of sticky blood had pooled beneath him. Mordock knelt, turned him gently.

"He still lives," he said, in answer to Raun's unasked question. "But not for long."

Talcrow stepped up beside Raun. "Looks like he's been here for a while," he grunted, and pointed to the remnants of a tiny fire.

"A few days, maybe," Mordock said.

The man groaned. Raun noted the filthy rags draped over the skeletal frame, the gaunt cheekbones and fevered eyes. A great gash in his belly leaked a noxious drainage.

"It's not Plague, is it?" Talcrow muttered, and took a step back.

"No Plague here," Mordock said. "But he'll die of those wounds."

The man clutched Mordock's sleeve. Tried to speak. Raun went back to the campfire and caught up a water bag. He glanced at the others. Kin slept, as did Seth. Rooster poked desultorily at the fire with a stick. Raun decided not to disturb them, and carried the water bag back to the alcove.

Mordock took the bag and held it to the man's lips. He slurped at it, then gagged. Water dribbled down his chin and he shivered.

His eyes locked on Mordock's mystic Eye, and his pained grimace softened to one of wonder.

"I made it...made it out," he whispered. "From the Stronghold. Damn Eaters... jumped me. I got away, but...hurt. Don't know how long I been here..."

His mouth worked. Mordock let him have a bit more water. The man pushed it away, his grip tightening on Mordock's arm. "Listen," he said. "I am dying – but hear me! I...I escaped from the Alguany Stronghold. There's..." his eyes widened in wonder, not looking at Mordock now, but reliving a memory. "The Warlord of Alguany has imprisoned an angel. An angel..." He licked his lips. Blood eased from the corner of his mouth. His eyes fixated on Mordock's Eye. "You must help her. I...I could not...too weak.

"Help her escape. Bring...her out. Into the light. An angel...she is...she is...our salvation..."

His eyes bulged and he gasped. The sleeve of Mordock's tunic tore under his grip. "Promise me," he pleaded in a dry whisper. "Find her...and...bring her...out."

His words trailed away, and he slumped back. His chest hitched once, then was still.

Mordock closed his staring eyes.

He looked up, and Raun cringed at the light in his Eye.

"An angel!" Reverence colored Mordock's voice. "There has not been a confirmed sighting of an angel in, what....?"

"Over a century," Talcrow whispered. "What we could do with one..."

"This is our miracle," Mordock said. His Eye gleamed. "Our turning point."

Mordock's face was awash with fervor. Raun couldn't look away.

"We will find your angel, my friend." Mordock addressed the dead man, but his burning gaze never left Raun's face. "And we will bring her down the mountain. For the benefit of all. I swear it."

* * * * *

The morning dawned somber, grey—and windless. They led the horses into the wan daylight.

Talcrow walked his horse up to Raun, smiling. "Maybe we should travel together. Easier to fight off the boogies."

Mordock overheard from where he was tightening his cinch strap. "Your swords would be welcome. We have your back."

He swung into the saddle and moved out, the others trailing after him.

Talcrow rode beside Raun. "I spoke with your friend last night," he said, nodding at Mordock. "After everyone else had bedded down. He thinks the dead man spoke true-words – about the angel."

"A figment of someone's imagination."

"Still—what if it is true?"

Raun sighed. "I've heard of angels. Of the things they can do. Don't believe it for a minute."

"But—just think of what it would mean."

Raun turned in the saddle and looked at him. "Our world is dying, friend. Nothing can bring it back."

"We still live. And while we live..."

"There is hope? The Maelstrom killed our world, Talcrow. Just look around you. Extinctions. Mutations. Diseases. I've watched it worsen since my grandfather's time. It will end us, believe me. And nothing can stop it. No science. No prayer. No angel."

"You are a bitter man, Raun."

"I am a realist, Talcrow."

Something moved behind Talcrow's eyes. "I am betting on your friend's vision," he said, and spurred his mount up the line to join Mordock.

It took Raun a few minutes to realize that what he'd seen in Talcrow's last look was pity.

They rode north. Mordock in the lead, but where he led Raun knew not. He was content to trail along, because what else was there?

All they could do was race the whirlwind to the preordained finish. And when the race was done, the demon Lucaedan could pick through the leavings.

* * * * *

"I don't remember the land falling off like this," Mordock said.

They had been traveling, through forest and highland, for the better part of a week. Now they faced marshland, spreading as far as the eye could see.

Raun shrugged. "Never been this far north myself."

They moved forward, the weak winter sun warming their backs. The ground was boggy and soft. Huge, leprous pitcher plants colonized the open spaces, their fleshy mouths straining towards the travelers with rabid hunger. Raun gave them a wide berth.

Tendrils of fog hovered close to the ground. Mordock sat still in the saddle, but his eyes were busy.

"What's wrong?" Raun asked.

"This marsh." Mordock pointed to patches of standing water glimpsed through the fog. "It'll turn to swamp soon, I think."

"So?"

"Don't care much for traveling in swamp."

They rode through the morning, sometimes splashing through shallow stagnant pools. Then the forest changed to cypress. Dark, oily water slid listlessly around knotted knee roots.

"Damn," Mordock whispered. He stood in his stirrups, stretched. "Wonder how far this goes?"

"Can't be far," Raun said. "This region isn't known for swamps. Look over there." He pointed to a mounded area on their left.

The ruins of an ancient building thrust cracked, disjointed stone through a smothering mantle of green vegetation.

They continued on, the horses wading for the most part. Here and there more ruins dotted the marsh, slowly decaying back into the ground. Raun could feel the age seeping from them like noxious vapor. The crumbling stones were covered in a patina of moss and algae.

"This is from the Before Times," Talcrow muttered. "This swamp—there was a city here. We're in one of the Ravaged Lands."

Mordock nodded. "I can see it now, in the way the land lays. How it's been—carved out. Some horrendous force destroyed this city."

The travelers wound their way among the ruins, at times backtracking when the way was blocked by mounds of rubble. Soon most of the ruins were behind them, but the swamp continued. Increasingly, they were forced to swim their horses across deep, black-water lagoons.

Raun feared what might lurk in this deeper water, and Mordock's increasing nervousness reinforced his fears.

"We need to get free of here," Mordock said. He glanced at the sky, where the light was fading to the west. "Find high ground. Before dark."

"Maybe go back, spend the night on one of those mounded ruins?"

"We've come too far. We'd never reach them in time."

Mordock's agitation increased as the lower rim of the sun touched the tree tops.

"I've seen swamps like this before. If nightfall catches us here, we're in deep trouble."

They increased their pace, pushing the horses hard. The water seemed shallower, but the horses were tiring. The sun slipped behind the trees, and it was as if a gossamer shroud had descended on the travelers.

Mordock cursed. He spurred his horse, frantically looking around. "No high ground anywhere. We may have to climb..."

"There!" Rooster said. He was on the flank, about twenty yards away. For the first time Raun realized that they had drifted apart from one another in the gloom. Now, as night closed an ebony fist around them, he could just make out the vague forms of Mordock and Rooster. The others were lost in the gathering dark.

"Father God be thanked!" Mordock said. "It's a spit of dry land—there, through the trees."

Raun squinted, then spotted the slender peninsula thrusting into the swamp. Suddenly, he realized he could see better than before. A gauzy emerald light enveloped them.

The water gurgled as something long and sinuous and glowing green slid between the horse's legs.

"Wurms!" Mordock cried out. "Get to the high ground! Move!"

He spurred his tired mount and it lunged forward, then screamed as a long, curling thing rose from the water. It poised for a second, then launched itself at the horse. Rasping teeth in powerful jaws latched on to the beast's side. Blood spurted as the wurm ate into the animal's belly.

Raun reined his mount around in a tight arc and sprinted forward. His sword flashed, and the wurm flailed and dropped to the water. He felt his horse reach the firm footing of dry land just as he realized the water was full of the long, glowing forms of the parasite wurms.

Rooster spurred up beside him, wide-eyed in the ghastly green glow.

"Where are the others?" he said, just as Mordock, with Seth close on his heels, charged onto the spit of land.

Raun heard a curse, and Talcrow emerged from the dark, flailing with his sword at a half-dozen wurms dangling from his horse's flanks. He reached the high ground and four swords fell, severing the wurms. Greenish ichors spurted. The wurm segments fell to the earth where they wriggled aimlessly. Raun blanched at the sight of the other half of the wurms disappearing into the horse's flesh.

A scream rent the night. Raun's head snapped around.

"Kin..."

Raun started towards the water, and Mordock grabbed his arm. "He's dead, Raun! You'll never..."

Raun shoved Mordock aside, took a running step and vaulted into the saddle. The horse jumped into the swamp, bursting through the water, green-tinged spray flying. Behind him, he heard Mordock's wild curse.

"Kin!" Raun shouted. "Kin, where are you?" The screams increased in intensity. Lines of green fire surged through the water, converging on Raun's mount.

A half-submerged deadfall appeared in Raun's path and on the other side he saw Kin. The boy's horse was down, covered in writhing green. Kin thrashed in the water, frantically clutching at the glowing wurms protruding from his body. His horrified shrieks filled the night.

"Kin!" Raun cried out, and wheeled his mount, striving to get around the deadfall. The horse moaned and shivered and Raun cursed aloud at the wurm shapes clinging and burrowing at its flesh.

Raun dug his heels into the horses flank but the game little animal faltered, fell back on its haunches. The horse's screams mingled with Kin's.

The horse toppled, and Raun kicked free, sliding in calf-deep water. He came up spurting, his sword in his hand.

The horse was covered in emerald death, and more phosphorescent lines darted towards Raun. He choked out a curse. His sword flashed.

A hot brand burned into his thigh as a wurm smashed against him, grinding teeth working at his flesh. He moaned, trying to pull the thing free as others converged on him.

And then a horse was there, and a strong arm reached down and jerked him from the water. He heard Mordock's terrified curse, sensed his friend's sword slashing down. The severed wurm fell to the water.

Mordock's mount almost made it back, collapsing just short of the peninsula. Mordock leaped with Raun in his arms, came down in ankle deep water, and sloshed to safety just ahead of a tide of emerald death that parted and flowed around the high ground before turning back to the horse.

An arrow flashed, burying itself in the animal's skull. Its agonized screams ceased.

"Kin!" Raun tried to shout, tried to struggle in Mordock's embrace, but sudden weakness assailed him. His thigh was on fire, and he glanced down at the ragged hole in his leg and realized the parasite had found a new host. He felt lightheaded, fevered.

The screams continued from the swamp.

Raun's eyes sought Seth, standing tall with a crossbow in his hands.

"The bow," Raun whispered. "Can you reach Kin?"

"I can't." Seth's eyes were wide. "I can't see him, Raun."

It took a long time for the screams to cease.

* * * * *

There came a time of vague and broken movement, through a shadow world of fevered dreams. Raun was lost and alone, bound in a net of pain, curled around the searing heat emanating from his core. Phantoms cavorted around him, and now and then he caught snatches of meaningless words.

"...don't get help soon, he'll die..."

"...growing inside him, feeding..."

"...tracks. Three wagons. Kipsies, I'd say. If we can..."

He shivered, wracked with the chill of fever. Brief visions flitted across his mind.

The wurm, eating into him.

Mordock, pulling him out of the swamp by sheer brute strength.

Kin, screaming...

Then the dreams shifted. A woman was there, holding him, comforting, easing his fears.

Kaedy.

He was home. Safe, resting by the hearth fire, Kaedy at his side. And Odem, his son, chewing honeycomb, laughing with Leah, his little daughter.

"...here, place him here. Hold him, now..."

Something cold and bitter was pressed to his lips and he fought, flailing, crying out in delirium.

"Kaedy! No, no...don't touch her! Please, no! Oh, please..."

Strong fingers gripped his jaw, forced his mouth open. Foul liquid slid down his throat. He gagged, retched. More liquid rushed down his gullet. It burned like demon fire.

"...get it all down, sirs. Take all of it to purge his system of the wurm..."

For a while he struggled, whimpering, eyes blind to all around him, but open wide to inner horrors.

...Kaedy, naked, splayed out on their bed, her skin black and swollen, blood seeping from her eyes...

...Odem, a crusted, broken shell lying on the ground, flies buzzing around his face...

...and the small, shuddering, quaking form of his daughter he clutched hard to his breast, crying out to Father God to please, please, save her. Please, don't take them all...

And then, mercifully, it all faded as he was drawn deep beneath the dark waters of unconsciousness.

* * * * *

There were brief periods of lucidity, followed by lingering delirium. His mind was elsewhere when the wurm emerged through his right side and fell, thrashing and squirming, to the dirt floor. Mordock crushed it under his boot.

For a while he hardly knew reality from fantasy. He thought there was a girl, a young, black- haired beauty who waited on him, washed the sick sweat from his body with cool cloths, cleaned him when he fouled himself. She kept merging with visions of Kaedy as she had been after they were wed—tall and willowy, her golden hair a shimmering halo in the sun, her laughter ringing in his ears.

Then the dark girl was back, urging him to swallow the contents of a blue glass flask. "For the eggs," she whispered. He drank it down without a protest.

* * * * *

"Emae. My name is Emae."

Raun sat outside the wagon where he had convalesced, his back propped against a wheel, face turned to the thin winter sun. It felt wonderful.

"That's a beautiful name," he whispered. His throat was dry, and he took a sip from the water skin she had given him.

"You will be weak for a time," she said. "But the medicine has cleansed your system. You will recover."

"I want to thank you," he said. Her eyes were amber gold, and he felt he could drown in them. He touched his side, where a white bandage covered the wound made by the wurm's exit. "For everything."

She smiled. "Your friends were distinctly uncomfortable. If we had depended on them to take care of your needs you would have died of neglect."

He returned her smile. "Then I thank Father God for my friend's squeamishness."

She hesitated a moment, and he raised an eyebrow in encouragement. "When you were lost in the Darklands," she started, "you called for someone—Kaedy, her name was." She looked down, then back up shyly. "Your wife?"

He looked away, his throat tight. "She...died. The Plague." He tried for a smile, couldn't pull it off. "Took almost the entire village. Kaedy. My son and daughter. I was spared—to watch them all sicken and blacken and bloat, then bleed out from every opening..." He swallowed, blinking.

Emae reached out, gently touched his face.

"You don't have to talk about it."

But it was there again, in his mind, and suddenly the tears came. He hunched forward, wracked by sobs, and never knew when Emae gathered him into her arms to hold him close.

* * * * *

"So tell me, mistress," Mordock said. "Are the stories true?"

They were gathered by a cooking fire, Mordock and Raun, with Emae by his side. And Talcrow, Seth and Rooster. A crone tended a steaming cauldron from which a delightful scent emanated. Raun's mouth watered. It had been some time since he'd eaten real food.

The old woman stirred the bubbling stew on the fire, then tasted a spoonful. She thought a moment, added an herb she'd taken from somewhere deep in her cloak.

"There are always tales," she said. "Kipsies are bandits. The Rhom are witches in league with Lucaedan, the Dark Master. We can summon demons, bring forth zombies, set spells on our enemies. Why not be the guardians of angels?" She took another tentative sip of hot stew, smacked her lips, frowned. "Just what have you heard, outlander?"

"That the Rhom protected the angels. Provided sanctuary until an angel was of age. Taught the angels about..."

The old woman raised an eyebrow and grinned. "Go on. You were doing so well."

Mordock sighed. "Look. I have the Sight, but nothing is clear where this angel is concerned. My Eye reveals the form of things, but not the essence. There is much we don't understand. Will you help us?"

She shrugged, doling out stew into wooden bowls and passing them around. They all dug in as she continued.

"There used to be angels, my grandpapa said. The last one disappeared over three generations ago. We – they trusted us. We hid them, helped them realize their potential. That's what the stories say.

"Grandpapa said they could – do things. Heal the sick. Make the crops grow. Purify the soil. That they could ease men's minds, turn them away from war and strife. They were like—light, he said. You could see through them. See their insides. But they were blue, a ghostly blue. And—they had wings. It was said that those with Abilities," she nodded at Mordock, "might be drawn to them."

Talcrow snorted. "I've heard other stories. That they had powers. Could wield the flame of the sun to do their bidding. Burn an army to ash."

The Kipsy shrugged. "Who knows for certain? Tall tales, likely."

* * * * *

Raun held Emae close in the dark confines of the wagon. The night wind was cool, and he snuggled deeper under the sleeping furs.

"We leave tomorrow, on the trail of a myth," he murmured. "Mordock is determined to play out this hand. And it is for nothing—there is no angel, no wondrous creature to save us all from one another. No angels—and no Father God"

She drew closer, sighing sleepily. He buried his face in her hair. "I would have you stay," she whispered. "Stay with me."

"I...Mordock needs me," he said. "He is my true-friend."

"A true-friend is a rare find this day and time," she said. She kissed his chest, then rolled over, straddling him. "But when you've done what you must, come back to me. We'll be somewhere along the Bluridge Path. And—bring the angel."

* * * * *

They rode out the following morning on fresh horses purchased from the Rhom. Raun left with memories of Emae warming him, but dark images of blackened flesh poisoned his thoughts.

Talcrow rode up to him. "This stronghold where the angel is captive. I think I may know of it."

He spat in the dust. "There's a warlord name of Kalquin. The Scythe of Alguany. Said to control all of the Alguany Mountains down into parts of the old N'Ork Kingdom. Not in Canda, but close."

"Warlords. Always, it's warlords."

Talcrow stared at him. "The strong take what they want. It's the world we live in. Kalquin's strength is the mountains, and the under-lord fiefdoms he controls. He draws conscripts from those barren rocks, and from the surrounding territories.

"Won't be a fairy dance, breeching the Scythe's stronghold. But maybe worth it. It's rumored he has stockpiled the wealth of ages. If we play this right, we can come out rich men."

"We'll be lucky to avoid being staked out for the wolves."

Talcrow cast a sidelong look at Mordock. "I don't think he realizes the true worth of this angel being – if what is said is true. If one were to—enlist the aid of such a creature—there's no telling what one could accomplish."

"I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Raun said.

"Think about it, friend," Talcrow said. He dropped back to ride beside Seth.

Raun spurred to catch up to Mordock. He was thinking that there was something about Talcrow that didn't ring true.

* * * * *

After a week's hard travel, the party limped into a small village outside the Wasinton Ruins. The horses were exhausted, as were the men.

Unsmiling villagers watched them rein in at a boarding house made of raw timber and dismount.

At the desk, Mordock inquired about rooms while Raun leaned against the wall, eyes on the villagers who had followed them in.

They trouped down a short hall, the smoke from oil lamps smudging the air around them. At the end of the hall was a parlor, where girls of various ages and appearances lounged around in a state of half-dress. They perked up when the travelers entered.

A girl sidled up to Raun, flaunting her charms. She smiled, caressed his arm with tapered nails. "For a few coppers, we'll warm your beds."

"Not for me," Raun said, pausing only long enough to spy the opposite doorway. He was too bone-weary for anything but sleep.

Mordock irritably shook off another of the persistent women and followed Raun. But Talcrow, Seth and Rooster lingered, smiling.

Raun looked back just before entering his room and saw the mercenaries disappearing into rooms of their own, bed-warmers in tow.

* * * * *

Raun was on his third mug of chicory coffee the next morning when Talcrow shuffled into the serving room, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

"There's a trading post across the street," he said. "We can provision before heading out."

Raun grunted, noncommittal. He eyed Talcrow from over the rim of his mug.

"Something bothering you, friend?"

Before Raun could answer, Mordock came in, looking rested and clean. Rooster followed close on his heels.

"The proprietor put up some meals for us to take on the road," Mordock said, holding up a greasy sack. "We'd best get moving. Where's Seth?"

Talcrow looked away from Raun, frowning. "Haven't seen him. Maybe still in bed."

Holding the sack at his hip, Mordock stalked down the hall into the parlor. Raun followed.

A few whores were up and about even at that early hour, surly and sour. "Seen our friend?" Mordock snapped. Raun knew his patience was wearing thin.

"He's still a-bed," a doughy redhead drawled. "With El, the new girl. Second room on the left."

Mordock rapped on the door. "Seth," he said. "Time to travel. Let's go."

No sound came from behind the door. Mordock sighed, glanced at Talcrow. The mercenary smiled thinly. "Too long without a woman," he said. "And some girls get off on those who are different."

Mordock grimaced. He grasped the knob and pushed the door open.

"Let's move..." he started to say, then stopped short. The bag dropped from his hand to the floor.

Raun caught a glimpse of Seth, sheathed in red, limbs askew in crimson sheets. The whore entwined around him, pressing into him with limbs and body and face. Wherever her flesh touched his, a rasping, slit-edged mouth clung greedily, sucking. Raun caught the gleam of needle-fine teeth in a hundred orifices.

Talcrow gagged, and Mordock gasped a curse and hauled at his sword. The whore-thing was oblivious, lost in the rapture of feeding, when the sword fell, severing her head.

And still the mouths worked on.

It took three slashing blades to still them.

* * * * *

Raun leaned against his horse, shivering in the morning sun. He could still picture Seth, eyes wide and unseeing, his once beautiful scales grey as porcelain where the blood had been leached from him. He licked his dry lips.

"I tell you," the proprietor screamed in Mordock's grip, "I didn't know! She wasn't a regular! I hadn't even seen her before!"

"Gut him," Talcrow said. He was seated on the steps, cleaning his nails with a dirk. "Just kill him and be done. Then we can burn this cesspool and get on with it."

Rooster was mounted, his mouth a thin line. He looked a little green. "Let's just ride," he said. He stared with open longing down the road leading away.

The other whores were gathered together, sobbing. "We didn't know," the redhead wailed. "She'd only been with us a few days. Your friend was her first partner. How were we to know?"

"How are we to know you're not all monsters?" Talcrow said.

"Because we'd all be dead," Mordock answered. He pushed the old man away in disgust. The proprietor staggered and fell on his rump in the dust.

"We burn nothing," Mordock said. He caught up his horse's reins and swung into the saddle. "Let's leave this place."

"Our provisions..." Talcrow started, but Mordock cut him off.

"We've enough for a few days. And we can hunt along the way. There are bound to be other villages up the road. I've had all I want from here."

He turned to the group of frightened people, threw a purse at the redhead's feet. His voice was iron. "Make sure our friend has a decent burial."

He took something from his clothes, twirled it between thumb and fingers. "We come back through here, find it not done – we'll continue where we left off." His thumb moved and a match flared into flame. He held it long enough to get their undivided attention, then tossed it into the dirt at their feet.

* * * * *

Rooster's horse collapsed just past the Ravaged Land of N'Ork. Cursing, Rooster removed his saddlebags and slung them over his shoulder. He looked longingly at Raun's mount, then Talcrow's. Talcrow laughed.

"Hell, you wore down a beast two hands bigger than mine. Don't expect me to share."

The next day they bought a draft horse from a farmer working the floodplain of a silt laden river.

A week later they were in the foothills of the Alguanies.

* * * * *

"Give me that damned rag," Raun said. Talcrow tossed him the cloth he'd used to clean the bite wound in Rooster's shoulder, and he dabbed at the well of blood from a gash on his upper thigh.

"There're gone," Mordock said. He clutched his bow, staring from their bolt-hole in the rocks to the fringe of forest below.

"Back to Lucaedan, I hope," Rooster grumbled. The Wolfaings had attacked in a pack just before dawn, a howling mass of blood-thirsty creatures, part man, part beast and nearly entirely insane from hunger and in-breeding. Their arrows had slaughtered some and drove the survivors back, but not before Raun and Rooster received the latest of their many wounds.

New scars atop the old.

Raun cursed again, and flung the rag down. "Mordock! We cannot do this. We are four, and sorely used—and just now into the mountains, for Father God's sake! What of it when we reach the Stronghold? What then, Mordock? What says your Eye?"

Mordock looked up from where he sat on a decaying pine log. He un-strung his bow. "Don't give up your hope, Raun."

"What hope? There is no hope...your Eye Sees, but you don't see!" Spittle flew from his lips. "Father God! You of all people should realize—there is nothing, Mordock. Nothing up there! No angel, no hope. Only our deaths."

He wound down, panting, his rage dissipating like hoar-ice in spring thaw. His shoulders slumped. "That's all there is left us."

Mordock stood. Raun noticed with new guilt that Mordock was exhausted. Nevertheless, the mystic drew himself up. His gaze sought Raun's, but there was no malice there. Only weary determination, coupled with grim fatalism.

"My way is forward, my friend," he said. "I will walk the last miles, up this rocky path. I will see it through. But you can leave, Raun. You're a true-friend, but I'll not hold you to this. As for me..."

"It's our deaths," Raun whispered. He felt brittle, hollowed out. Old.

Mordock's lip curled in a grimace that Raun realized was a smile. "I am tired, Raun. I've seen too much death. Too much ruin. There has to be something up there. Something more."

"Only death."

"Then so be it. I will face death. Even welcome it. But I will have my answers. I will feed my hope."

Mordock turned and strode to his mount.

Raun looked at Talcrow. The mercenary leaders face was a mask.

Raun's hands ached, and when he looked down, he saw them clenched at his sides in fists of iron. With an effort, he relaxed. He drew a breath, let it out.

"There is more," Talcrow said. Raun glanced at him. Talcrow smiled, but it held no warmth. "There is opportunity."

Raun found his stirrup, mounted. Without another glance at Talcrow, he turned his horse and fell in on Mordock's trail.

* * * * *

They sat at a table under the awning of an eating house in the small hamlet of N'Haven. A grey rain sheeted down, runoff cascading from the awning in a translucent curtain that all but obscured the brooding wall of dark stone that blocked the pass to the Alguany Stronghold.

"Foul weather," Talcrow said. He scowled at the rain and took a deep pull on his tankard of mead. He wiped the back of his hand across his lips. Raun followed his gaze. He could just make out the forms of sentries atop the battlements, blurred by the rain.

"How are we supposed to get in there?" Rooster said to no one in particular.

Mordock sipped at a cracked clay cup of steaming tea. "That's the easy part. No need to sulk. We volunteer."

"Kalquin is always looking for fighters," Talcrow explained. "Mercenaries. Soldiers. More than the riff-raff conscripts culled from outlying provinces. We walk up there and offer our swords." He took another swig of mead. "Of course, getting out may not be so easy."

They finished their meager meal, doffed the last dregs of their drinks, gathered their belongings and went out into the rain.

* * * * *

As Mordock had predicted, they had no trouble entering the stronghold. Even with the rain, a steady stream of travelers plodded in and out through a massive, arched gateway—merchants, craftsmen, families, and men-at-arms, riding horses or wagons or slogging on foot through the muck, heads down and water streaming from their clothes.

Talcrow led them to a stone hut built against the solid rock of the pass, where they volunteered their services to Kalquin for room and board and all the plunder they could steal. The bored Captain of the Guard was glad to see them. "We're in need of mercenary talent," he said, eying Talcrow and Rooster's crossbows. "But you two..." He cast a dubious glance at Raun and Mordock.

"We're trackers," Mordock said, and showed the spoor tattoos on the outside of his wrists. "Driven from Atlahna by the Plague. We'll be worth our weight in gold once the Warlord moves his army—we can scout the way, locate sources of supply. Serve as spies."

The captain shrugged. "Fine by me," he said. He gave them directions to the barracks.

They followed the route the man had given them until the rock walls of the pass gave way to the heart of the Stronghold.

Raun looked around him, awed. They were surrounded by a massive fortress, the largest stone fortification he had ever seen. A chill swept up his spine. They were in the dragon's belly. Now all they had to do was get out. Alive, and not as scat.

After a few false turns, they found the barracks and reported to the sergeant-of-arms. They were issued blankets and chain mail and assigned bunks in the long building.

"Everything is stone here," Rooster complained. "Cold, damp, stone."

The barracks was a long, low-ceilinged building made of native rock. There was a fireplace at each end, with rough wood tables in the center and bunks against the wall. It would hold over 100 men, but only a third of the bunks looked used.

"Kalquin's army is a little thin right now," a rangy grey-bearded man told them. "He has raiding parties out to the west, and north into Canda. When they return, we'll be sent out on our own forays. Kalquin is ambitious. He won't rest until he is Overlord of the entire territory."

"That's a sizable area," Raun said.

The man shrugged. "Mostly independent tribes or loose federations. Those who won't swear allegiance to the Warlord are eliminated. They don't call him the Scythe of Alguany for nothing."

Talcrow looked at him. "All that raiding—I'd bet Kalquin has accumulated a sizable fortune."

The man's gaze was flat. "I wouldn't know about that."

Mordock placed his kit on a bunk. "If I was warlord, I'd ransom prisoners. There's good money in it. Does Kalquin's ambition extend to ransom? Must be a lot of wealthy families in the outlying regions."

"Sure. Raiders return with prisoners. Most are sold as slaves. I hear a few are ransomed – mostly women or first-born. They're treated well. Fed and protected from rape and abuse. He keeps them in the Enclave—pet name for his dungeons."

* * * * *

The old man smelled of rancid grease, and when Mordock passed him the small sack of gold dust it slid out of sight with oiled efficiency. Mordock grimaced and wiped his fingers on his tunic.

"Point her out, then," he said.

They were gathered under the shelter of a portico on the upper story of a building overlooking a stone-flagged yard. Chickens picked at the cracks between stones. A ragged group of prisoners milled uncertainly under the watchful eyes of Kalquin's guards.

"They exercise 'em every evening," the greasy man whispered. "All brought out here, just as I said. Didn't I say that, cap'n, eh?"

"Yes, yes," Mordock said. "Now which one is the so-called angel?"

"Mind, I don't believe that nonsense," the man said in a superior note. "Bull crap if you ask..."

"I didn't," Mordock said, an edge creeping into his voice. "And you've been well paid for one thing. Show us the woman."

The greasy man raised a finger. "That one," he said. "Next to the corner, there."

Beside Mordock, Raun stared at the figure. A young woman, her raven hair tied back severely. Her plain dress had seen better days. Her eyes held a bruised and vacant look, and she shuffled about, her feet barely moving.

The greasy man noted where he gazed and grinned. "No, no, cap'n, not that one. The other, behind her."

Raun stared. The second woman wasn't so young. Maybe middle aged, with hair going grey, and pallid, waxen skin pocked from some childhood disease. Her movements were furtive, and her deep-set eyes constantly darted, touching on the other prisoners in the yard, the guards...and, briefly, he thought, on where they were hidden in the deep shadows of the portico.

"You fool," Talcrow hissed. "That old crone? Nothing angelic about her."

"Arthritic, maybe," Rooster murmured, and the greasy man barked a laugh.

"That's her, right enough. Captured back in the spring. Heard she was picked from the seat of a Kipsy wagon draped with corpses. Couldn't figure why they bothered. All she owned was the dress she was a-wearing and a moldy old carpetbag. Knifed a fool who tried to take it away.

"Didn't make sense why Kalquin would take an interest. But when I heard she was an angel, I understood, I surely did."

Mordock scratched the stubble on his chin. "This...can't be right. How came she by the name of angel?"

The greasy man cackled. "By her own say so, cap'n. By her own say so."

* * * * *

"Speak your piece, Raun," Mordock said. "I know you want to."

Raun glared, started to speak, then bit back the bitter words. What would be the use?

A rough laugh came from Talcrow's bunk. The mercenary leader lounged back, seemingly at ease, his hands behind his head. "Were we roundly conned or what? That bitch an angel? Father God, I wouldn't have her in the same room!" He swung his legs over the bed, smiling, and started gathering his belongings.

"It's been fun, Mordock. But Rooster and I have better things to do."

For the first time, Mordock seemed uncertain. Raun hated seeing the self-doubt in his friend's eyes, but he had to agree with Talcrow. The emaciated crone they had seen in the court was no angel.

"Mordock, we tried. We saw it out. There's no shame—it just wasn't to be."

Mordock hesitated, looking at each of them in turn. His shoulders slumped slightly and he started to speak when the barrack's door flew open and smashed against the wall. Armed men swarmed around them. Talcrow started to stand and a mailed hand pushed him roughly down. A sword point pressed against his throat.

A tall, broad-shouldered man with long, flowing red hair strode into the room. He wore silver armor decorated with glyphs and runes and the scars of battle. The well-worn pommel of a sword jutted from a scabbard at his hip. Cold eyes bored into Raun's, then slid to Mordock.

"That's the one, Lord Kalquin. The one who gave me the gold. They said they were after the angel!" The greasy man cackled and pranced at Kalquin's side.

"Take them," the Scythe of Alguany said. The warlord's guards closed on them. They were searched, their weapons confiscated. Raun's hands were jerked behind his back, his wrists knotted together with rawhide. Shocked by their abrupt capture, he only half-comprehended the greasy man dancing in front of Mordock.

"You think I would betray my Lord?" he giggled and pranced. "For your measly sack? He rewarded me with ten times that, cap'n!. Ten times what you..."

Mordock stepped forward like a cat. His wrist flicked, and a dirk was in his hand. He buried the dirk in the greasy man's eye.

Blood spurted and the man spasmed and fell. Then Kalquin's guards closed on them, pummeling them to the ground.

Spitting blood, Raun was hauled erect. Mordock swayed between two burly guardsmen. Blood flowed freely from a cut over his Third Eye.

The greasy man lay dead at their feet.

Kalquin wiped a spatter of blood from his cheek with bored disinterest. His cold eyes swept the guards who had searched them and they quailed at his look. He turned back to Mordock, and Raun thought a slight smile curled the thin lips.

"Are you unarmed now?" he asked. Mordock mutely nodded.

Kalquin turned on his heel and stalked away and his guards followed, with Raun, Mordock and Talcrow in tow.

Only then did Raun realize that Rooster was missing.

* * * * *

The angel woman was right beside them—separated only by a foot of stone.

Raun covered his ears with his fists and hunkered on his haunches as far from that wall as he could get. "Father God! Doesn't she ever shut up?"

They'd been placed in a stone-walled dungeon cell secured by a small gate of rusted iron bars. Their cell was one of many in Kalquins dungeons, but right next to the one that held the angel woman.

Despite the thick stone between them, the muttering and mad cackling of the woman clearly reached them – punctuated every once in awhile by one word.

"Angel..." Whisper. Murmur. Mumble. "Angel..." Snort. Cackle. Mutter. "Angel..."

Talcrow barked a rueful laugh. "Kalquin's idea of a joke."

Raun glanced at Mordock. The tall man stood by the wall separating them from the angel woman, his long fingers lightly tracking the stonework. His eyes were closed, but his Eye was wide open and shone with an inner light.

"You came from the mountains," he whispered. His voice was dry, wintry. "Came with no one and nothing. You...you are mute. Outcast, and alone..."

The hidden voice cackled and whimpered and moaned.

"Stumbled on the Rhom." Mordock's voice was so low Raun had to strain to hear it over the woman's noise. "You were taken in, cared for. Then..." Mordock's Eye widened, his face contorted. "Then...attack. Berserkers! You hid. Under old clothes and blankets in the wagon. They looted and burned, but didn't find you. They...slaughtered the Rhom. Set fire to the wagons..."

His body jerked, his nails scraping at the stone. Talcrow stared, his mouth slightly ajar. Raun had seen his friend in this state once before, and still it unnerved him.

"Smoke...flames. You...crawled out. Under cover of the smoke. Fled to the brush – and hid there till the raiders were gone.

"You were sitting there, on the burned-out shell of the wagon. Clutching your carpet bag tight to your breast. The bodies of the Kipsies all around you.

"Mouthing your mad song—when Kalquin's soldiers found you."

* * * * *

Raun started up from a nightmare of swollen corpses and carrion crows to the feel of someone watching him. He rubbed his eyes and sat up, staring at the barred door. The Scythe of Alguany stared back at him.

Raun nudged Mordock awake.

"Find what you were looking for?" Kalquin said.

Mordock stood. "You know why we're here." He nodded to the wall separating the two cells. "For her."

"The...angel, you mean?"

Mordock said nothing.

Kalquin cocked his head. "And you expect me to just, what? Turn her over to you?"

"You don't know what you have. She can save us all."

Kalquin's lip curled in that mocking smile. "You think she's an angel – why?"

Mordock sighed. "I have Seen her. My Eye brought us here. And...she calls herself 'angel'."

"And you, mystic—you believe the ranting of a mad crone?"

"My Eye has led me to her," Mordock said with quiet conviction. "An angel exists. There is hope for us all. We can stand against the coming night—if we join together."

Kalquin turned slightly to look at Raun. "What of you, tracker? What do you believe?"

"I believe in Mordock," Raun said.

"A crock of bull," said a new voice. Talcrow glowered at Kalquin from the shadows. "Any fool can see that old woman isn't an angel."

Kalquin laughed. "Maybe she sees it different," he said. He laughed again. Spun on his heel and walked away. Still laughing.

Raun looked at Mordock. What was that all about?

* * * * *

They trudged the stone courtyard. The air was brisk, and a few snowflakes drifted around Raun's shoulders. He could see his breath, and he rubbed his hands together, striving to coax a little warmth into his frozen extremities.

"What do they want with us?" he said. "We're worth nothing. He could have had us killed outright. Instead, we're thrown in here." He was thinking torture. Mutilation. Fun stuff.

"I'm missing something," Mordock said. He was staring at the old woman where she sat huddled in her corner, mumbling nonsense.

"Don't worry with it," Raun snapped. "Look outward...with your Eye. We need your insight."

He was thinking about Rooster. Out there somewhere. Free.

Their hole-card.

Mordock turned on him, all three of his eyes hard as flint. "Raun, you'll think I'm insane, but I truly believe that woman is an angel. Otherwise, why would we be connected?"

Raun stared. He'd had about enough of angels.

Movement caught his eye, and he turned. Talcrow trudged up, his hand on the arm of the young woman they had mistakenly believed was the angel before.

"Tell them," he whispered fiercely.

The girl cringed at Talcrow's tone. Her eyes darted frantically.

"You'll take me with you, sir? You'll...you'll help me?" She jerked a hand towards Talcrow. Her voice quavered. "He said you were going to escape. You'll take me with you?"

"Shhh, shhh," Mordock soothed. He shot a look at Talcrow. "It's alright, lass. What do you want to tell us?"

"They...they..."

"What is it, child? We won't harm you." Mordock said softly. His voice was mesmerizing. His Eye held the girl, and she relaxed visibly.

"Before...before you came. They...brought in a man. A Kipsy. He was burned something awful. All of him, blackened and burned..." She swallowed.

"Go on," Mordock said.

"They threw him in our cell," she whispered. "I tried to help. Gave him water. But...he was dying. In awful pain. Before he died...he said..."

"What, child? What did he say?"

"He clutched my sleeve. He wouldn't let go. And he said..."

Raun closed his eyes. He had no mutant telepathy, but he knew what the girl's words would be before she spoke.

"He said...protect the angel."

* * * * *

"What more proof do you want, Raun?" Mordock said. They were hunched over wooden bowls of watery gruel, the meager fare doled out every evening by their jailers. Raun dipped his fingers in his bowl, licked them clean. There was nothing he could say.

"Dying words carry weight," Mordock continued. "We need to get her away from here. Back to the Kipsies. They'll know what to do."

Talcrow snorted. Confinement had hardened his features. His eyes were black and feral. "I say we keep her for ourselves. We could be kings by right of possession."

Mordock turned on him. "The angel is not for such as us. She is the balm of mankind."

"You're weak, Mordock. With the angel under our control, we could do anything. Have anything. Power. Riches. We could rule over all."

Mordock's Eye narrowed to a slit. "You will stay away from her, mercenary. Or answer to me."

Talcrow glared at him, then spat out a curse and stalked to the other side of the cell.

Raun started to say something when a soft thud sounded from the shadowed corridor beyond their cell.

There came a gasp of surprise, then another thud and the chink of armor striking stone.

Rooster appeared in the faint light from the oil lamp on the wall. He was grinning.

"Thought I'd be quieter, taking out those guards," he said. Raun stared at him, amazed.

Rooster grasped a rusted bar with all four hands. "Best stand back," he whispered. His corded muscles bunched, quivered—and with a grinding rasp the bar bent almost double and separated from the floor.

Another bar suffered the same fate, and Raun, Talcrow, and Mordock quickly slipped out.

Mordock slapped Rooster on one arm, nodding his thanks.

Talcrow crossed to the guards, searched quickly. "No keys."

The angel's cell proved to be larger than theirs. It held the woman, plus two gaunt men as well as the girl they had spoken to previously.

Rooster twisted another two bars from their sockets and Mordock coaxed the angel woman out. She was confused, frightened, but Mordock spoke soothingly, calming her down.

The dark haired girl slipped out, and the two men followed. All of them looked at Mordock from grateful eyes.

Their actions had caught the attention of the other prisoners, however.

"Let us out," came a fierce whisper from the shadows. "Help us!" another ranted. A murmur of desperation emanated from the clustered cells.

Mordock hesitated, and Talcrow grabbed his arm. "We don't have time!" he hissed, and Raun silently agreed.

Mordock nodded, and they padded down the corridor, the prisoners left behind wailing in despair.

"That noise will rouse the guard," Raun whispered. They increased their pace.

"Weapons," Mordock said, and Rooster answered. "This way—there's an armory. Saw them taking pikes from there earlier."

They reached the armory. Found it locked.

"Do it quick," Mordock said, and Rooster reared back and lashed out with a huge boot. The lock splintered and the door sagged inward. Raun cringed at the noise, but nobody responded. The corridor remained silent as a Plague-scoured town.

Talcrow was the first one in, bearing a torch he'd taken from the corridor wall. Racks of weapons greeted them—swords, pikes, crossbows. Raun chose a fine blade and scabbard, a knife, and a stout hunting bow and quiver of arrows. Mordock, Talcrow and Rooster, as well as the other prisoners, quickly selected weapons.

They were leaving when the angel woman gave an incomprehensible cry and darted to a door across from the armory. It was unlocked, and she slipped inside. Raun was right behind her.

He found himself in a storeroom. Bales of cloth and wooden boxes were stacked haphazardly. The angel woman was bending over a bundle on a low bench, cooing and mumbling to herself. As he watched, she grabbed the bundle, clutched it to her breast. He saw that it was a battered, soiled carpet bag.

"Come on," Talcrow said from the corridor. "Let's leave this place."

They filed into the hallway, Rooster leading, Raun bringing up the rear.

"I have horses waiting," Rooster whispered. "This passage opens into a courtyard that fronts a side street. The horses are concealed in an alley across from the court yard."

They reached the horses without incident. Rooster had only enough for the four of them, so the angel woman, the girl and two prisoners were forced to ride double. Talcrow was for leaving them, but Mordock wouldn't hear of it.

Rooster led them at a quiet walk down the cobbled street.

They kept to the shadows. The moon was high and bright, and Raun felt a qualm. There was too much light for stealthy movement.

They had traveled a hundred yards and Raun was starting to breathe easier when there was a shout behind them and a clatter of steel.

"Go!" Mordock shouted, and slapped heals to his horse.

The group shot down the street, hooves ringing on stone. They caromed around a corner into a plaza and Mordock cursed.

The plaza was filled with armed men.

"Keep on!" Rooster shouted. "There's a side gate just down that street. I killed the guard – it's our way to freedom!"

They pounded across the plaza. Men shouted and dove out of their way. Raun saw Mordock ride down a man who tried to stab him with a pike. The angel clutched tightly to Mordock's waist.

An arrow flicked by Raun's ear, and he flinched.

They reached the gate, and Rooster swung down, pushed against the massive door. It swung open with a ponderous groan.

"Go!" he shouted, then grunted as an arrow buried itself in his back. He bellowed with rage and drew two massive broadswords, swinging one in each pair of hands.

Talcrow's horse pounded past. The prisoner who had been behind Rooster and was now trying to control the terrified, pitching horse gasped as three arrows struck his body. The other was pulled screaming from Raun's horse.

Raun cursed, terror lending him wings. He bent low and aimed for the door.

There came another scream. The girl. She had fallen from Talcrow's horse, and he had abandoned her. Now she staggered erect, only to catch an arrow in the shoulder. She gasped and fell to one knee.

"Don't leave me!" she cried, and men converged on her. Raun saw Mordock hesitate, then wheel his horse close to Raun's.

"Take the angel!" he yelled. "I promised her!"

Raun saw the determination in his friend's eyes. Reached out, caught the woman around the waist, and hauled her to him.

Mordock wheeled and started back for the girl as Raun raced back towards the gate, the angel woman clinging tight.

He shot a desperate glance over his shoulder. Saw the girl stagger as a second arrow found her, heard her choked scream. She fell to her knees, then disappeared under a swarm of hacking swords.

He couldn't see Mordock, but heard his despairing cry.

Rooster was fighting four soldiers, his swords trailing crimson. Then he was falling, choking on blood from a pike thrust to the throat, just as Raun stormed through the gate.

The horse fled into the night, merging with the shadows of the woodland. They were away from the Stronghold. Free.

* * * * *

Raun rode through the night, carefully maneuvering down the mountain and into the foothills. He stopped just long enough to fasten squares of sound-dampening burlap he'd found in his saddlebags around his horse's hooves before moving on, using all his tracker lore to mask their trail.

Just before dawn he stumbled on a slot canyon barely wide enough for his horse. He walked the skittish animal deep into the winding passage.

It wasn't long before the canyon widened and opened out into a small grassy valley. Raun skirted the valley to a jumble of boulders at the far side. There, tired beyond anything he had ever known, he swung down.

He helped the woman dismount and she promptly slumped to the rocky ground, the carpet bag clutched tight in her hands. She glared at Raun from suspicious eyes.

"Angel...", she muttered.

Raun slumped against a boulder. He held his horse's reins in his hands in case he had to move fast.

He had seen Rooster fall, had no doubt about him. Mordock and Talcrow—he didn't know.

Half dead with fatigue, he watched the angel woman as she muttered and mewed over her possessions. She opened the bag, pulled out a multi-colored shawl, babbled with obvious pleasure. She put it aside, rummaged deeper, hauled out a scoping sphere, translucent and faceted. Raun had seen them before, used by the Kipsies to see the future—or so they said. He'd never believed it.

She placed the sphere on the shawl, dug deeper, took out a handful of tangled beads, running them through her fingers and cackling softly. A silver mirror followed, then a clutch of colorful scarves, a wide golden belt, and a knife with a jeweled haft in a scabbard of calf skin. The woman examined each of the items, cooing and mumbling under her breath, then stuffed them all back into the bag. She pulled it to her, hugging it close with both arms. She rocked quietly, babbling undecipherable sounds.

Raun blinked. He needed sleep.

Where were the others? Was he the only survivor?

He felt un-tethered, adrift. All of this mad adventure. For nothing.

A click of hoof on stone erased his fatigue and brought him lunging to his feet, his hand on his sword. A horse came around the boulders.

Mordock.

Raun sighed in relief, then gasped. Mordock slumped in the saddle, hand clutching his shoulder. Dark blood spooled between his fingers. When he spotted Raun, his lips curled in a tired smile.

"Not as bad as it looks," he whispered.

Raun helped him down. The wound was deep but seemed to have missed anything vital. Raun cleaned and bandaged it. Mordock endured Raun's treatment stoically. He was brooding.

"There's still something I'm not Seeing," he said in a fierce whisper. "Like Kalquin – why did he have the angel woman imprisoned? He would have had her guarded, sure, but not stuck in the dungeons. More than likely in his own quarters, or nearby."

"Don't think about it," Raun said. "We have her now."

"Talcrow?" Mordock asked, and Raun shook his head. "Haven't seen him."

* * * * *

They rested in the concealment of the boulders. Raun was for heading out, but Mordock cautioned otherwise. "Wait for dark," he said.

As twilight crept in on cat's feet, they mounted. The angel woman was back behind Mordock.

They left the boulder patch and walked their horses down the hill and into the dark forest.

"There should be a river a few miles south," Mordock said. "We can reach it, follow it down."

They were picking their way through the river's floodplain undergrowth when Mordock swore softly.

"What?" Raun said. He could barely keep his eyes open.

"The greasy man. Recall what he said? They found the woman on the wagon. With that carpetbag. But when I scanned her in the cell, I saw her arriving at the wagons with nothing. She scavenged that bag from the Kipsies.

"I've been a fool! I thought she was an angel because she was with the Rhom. Thought they were protecting her. But she wasn't with the Kipsies, Raun. She never was. They took her in."

"So?" Raun was too exhausted to care.

"My Eye led me to her. Why? And why did she go to the Kipsies in the first place? It's like she was led...Father God! I think I've figured it out. I..."

Raun waited for him to finish. When he didn't, Raun turned.

Mordock sat his horse, his eyes wide. A crossbow quarrel was buried in his chest. As Raun watched in dawning horror, Mordock slowly toppled from his horse.

Lightning slammed into Raun's shoulder. He felt himself falling, tried to grab the horse's mane, felt his fingers trail through coarse hair—then he was on his back, staring at the sky.

He heard the approach of a horse. Then a hard, familiar voice.

"You should watch your back trail a bit closer, Raun," Talcrow said. Raun hitched himself into a sitting position. A crossbow bolt protruded from his shoulder. He looked up at Talcrow. The mercenary flashed a nasty smile, his crossbow cocked and ready.

"There's no need to share our—resource. I'll take care of her from here. Put her to good use. And reap the rewards." He walked his horse over to Murdock's, gathered its reins and led it, along with the angel woman, back to where Raun was fighting to rise.

Raun fumbled for his sword, knowing there was nothing he could do. "I should have put steel in you a long time ago," he said. His voice was hoarse, ragged. He struggled to his knees.

Talcrow aimed the crossbow. "Goodbye, Raun," he said—and then Talcrow's face was full of screeching fury as the angel woman launched herself from the horse's back and attacked him.

Talcrow cursed and his horse screamed in fright and pin-wheeled. Raun heard the twang as the crossbow released, but had no idea where the quarrel went. He staggered to his feet, sword in hand, and as Talcrow tossed the woman aside like discarded clothing and pulled at his sword, Raun lunged forward and up. His blade slipped past the horse's breast and buried itself a foot into the mercenary's chest.

Blood exploded from Talcrow's gaping mouth and he rose on his toes in his stirrups. His sword fell from nerveless fingers as he slid from the saddle, dead before he hit the ground.

* * * * *

Raun cradled Mordock's head in his lap, gently brushed back his hair. Mordock's chest hitched. Bright blood flowed freely from his mouth. His eyes were fixed on something Raun couldn't see.

"I figured it out," Mordock whispered. He smiled, then coughed, spitting blood. "Why Kalquin held the woman. She...she's no angel, Raun. You...were right. But...she was led to the Kipsies. She...knows. Where the angel is..."

He gasped. He plucked at Raun's sleeve. "Keep her safe, Raun. She knows..." He swallowed. "Use her to...find the angel...and stand against the night..."

His voice faded, and he sagged in Raun's arms. Raun watched the last vapor of his friend's breath trail away on the winter wind.

* * * * *

It took him a while to gather the strength to stand and check on the woman. She lay where she had fallen, knocked unconscious, no doubt, by the fall she had taken when Talcrow threw her from his horse.

He nudged her with his toe. "Get up, witch," he snarled. His rage was mounting with his grief. All of this—for nothing.

"I have questions for you, woman! Get up!" He kicked her, none too gently. She didn't move.

A sudden insight came over him, and his knees went weak. Kneeling, he struggled with his good hand to turn her over.

His strength left him, and he collapsed next to the lifeless body of the woman.

Now he knew where Talcrow's final quarrel had gone.

* * * * *

He came to his senses to the warmth of the winter sun on his face and the buzz of flies gathering on the old woman's eyes.

It took a while to work the bolt from his shoulder, and twice he almost fainted from the pain. He managed a small fire, heated water to a boil. Cleansed the wound. He sterilized his knife blade in the fire. Then, steeling himself, he cauterized the hole left by the bolt.

And for a time he did pass out, only to come to once again knowing there was more to be done.

He scraped out a shallow grave for Mordock, and covered him the best he could, all the while fighting down the bitter bile of despair. Balyn, Kin, Mordock. Seth and Rooster. Talcrow. All dead. Along with Kaedy, Odem, and little Leah.

And the angel woman.

The taste of ashes fouled his mouth.

Burying Mordock left him exhausted, but he wouldn't quit. He could manage only to drag the angel woman to a depression in the ground and cover her with sticks and leaves, a pitiful excuse for a grave. But in doing so he made a discovery. Under her greasy hair, at the back of her head, was a third Eye.

She had been a mutant. A mystic, as Mordock had been.

Hadn't done her much good, Raun thought. He giggled, and recognized in the sound a dawning insanity.

He whirled around, almost falling. Winter gripped the land. The sun had disappeared behind slate grey clouds. Dormant trees, their brown, dead leaves matted around them, seemed to leap at him with skeletal, grasping fingers.

Their world had run its course. He'd tried to get Mordock to realize that. Now it was too late. Death had won.

And ruled over all.

* * * * *

Raun opened his eyes once more—to find that in his delirium he had collapsed atop Mordock's grave. It was full night and bitter cold.

He lurched up, his head spinning. A low growl came from his left. Two wolves slunk from the shadows. He cried out, scooped up a handful of dirt from the mound under him, flung it at the wolves. He heard them padding away through the dark woods.

Shivering with fever as much as the cold, he managed to crawl to the remnants of his fire, blow the coals to life. He added sticks and built up a tidy blaze.

He hunkered over the fire, the fevered chills wracking his bones. And a spark of defiance rose in his breast.

He realized with dull surprise that he wanted to live.

All he had were the clothes on his back, a knife, and a stolen sword. He'd lost the bow somewhere during the flight from the Stronghold.

He needed food and water. And a horse—but they were long gone.

The wind picked up. Stalkers would be abroad soon. And Kalquin would surely be searching for them. He should move, but his muscles refused to work.

He shivered anew, almost crying at the ache in his body. His wound throbbed, and he knew it was infected.

So cold.

He thought he heard the wolves returning, and strained to see them in the dark. He didn't spot the animals, but his eyes touched on the old woman's carpet bag and he remembered the shawl he'd seen earlier.

Trembling, he crawled from the fire, mistrustful of the dark forest around him. He snatched the bag and dragged it back to the fire.

He spilled the contents on the ground, caught up the shawl, and wrapped it tight around his shoulders. And still he shivered.

Words flitted through his mind.

"...all she owned was the dress she was a-wearing and a moldy old carpetbag. Knifed a fool who tried to take it away..."

"...came from the mountains. Came with no one and nothing..."

"...angel...angel..."

"...was said that those with Abilities might be drawn..."

"...maybe she sees it different..."

"...maybe she Sees..."

Father God.

Mordock had been linked to her not because she was an angel but because she was a mystic.

And she had linked with the Kipsies. But why...

A chill that had nothing to do with fever swept up his spine.

She'd been drawn to the Rhom because they were harboring an angel.

But where...his eyes touched on the empty carpetbag.

And he knew.

He caught up the scoping sphere, cradled it in his hands. From somewhere behind him came the distant howl of a wolf. Raun ignored it.

He coughed thickly, spat in the fire. Gazed into the sphere.

And went rigid.

The sphere was warming in his hands.

Deep within its liquid depths, something moved.

Mesmerized, he watched a faint blue light coalesce within the sphere. It expanded outward. And up.

Indigo washed the surface of the globe, swirling around its circumference. And suddenly a faint crack reached his ears. The sphere parted along its center. The two halves splintered, fracturing into small pieces that floated like flower petals into the fire before him.

Awed, Raun stared at the small, still form in his hands. Stared at the tiny beating heart, the fragile lacework of bones that he could see quite clearly through the translucent, blue-tinted skin.

From its back, a delicate fan of wings unfurled—still damp from the egg.

The infant creature raised its head, and Raun was lost in the depth of fathomless ebony eyes awash with trust, and a raw, elemental love he had never known.

And the angel smiled.

* * * * *

Raun packed his meager belongings in the saddlebags on Talcrow's horse. The animal had wandered into the clearing just before dawn, seemingly attracted to the fire. But Raun thought something else may have had an influence.

His fever had vanished, the infection dissipating at some point during the night. And the wound—the wound had closed, was already scarring over. There was almost no pain.

A miracle.

Raun swung into the saddle. His mind was clear, untroubled for the first time in years. He felt the stirring under his shirt, emanating from the bundle he cradled gently against his belly. Felt the beating of a small heart. Heard the soft, contented cooing.

He needed to travel. It was many miles to the Bluridge Path. To where the Kipsies awaited.

And Emae.

He touched heels to the horse. At long last, he was going home.

Garbage Man

"Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord." – Romans 12:19

Henry Hatcher rises with the rooster, and is in the shower when the clock radio snaps on in the middle of the Early Bird Garden Show—"with Hank Hanley!"

Hanley is talking some nonsense about loading your soil with industrious worms, and Hatcher tunes it out as he meticulously scrapes yesterday's whiskers from his face, taking care to trim his graying mustache just right.

He dresses in a worn green work shirt with "Hatcher" emblazoned on the pocket, slips on a pair of torn jeans and his steel-toed boots. He puts on an ancient Timex and the shell bracelet his grandson Toby gave him years ago, slips a silver chain with a tiny silver cross around his neck – a gift from Iris – and heads out the door and down the hall, to the tiny kitchen where he can hear her puttering around fixing breakfast.

All familiar rituals that in no way dampen the crawling anxiety settling over him like a shroud.

He sits in a slat chair at the head of the Formica-topped table as Iris pours him a cup of strong, black coffee and lands a peck on his bald spot. She shuffles to the stove and stirs the steaming pan of gravy. Hatcher pours a little coffee in his saucer, blows on it, then raises the saucer to his lips and sips as he stares out the window.

Hanley of the Early Bird Garden Show is gone and AM News takes his place, the reporter rattling on about a collision out Highway 53 involving two school buses, nobody hurt, no need for parents to be concerned. As if that'll help. Road will be jam-packed with frantic parents tearing off to the scene to check on their kids.

Have to take a detour this morning.

Hatcher drinks coffee, his mood darkening as relentless dawn yellows the horizon.

Iris brings him his plate, casts him a worried glance.

Methodically he eats his breakfast, the scrambled eggs perfect, gravy and cat-head biscuits delicious as usual. Iris gingerly folds her willowy frame into her chair. He can tell her arthritis is bothering her this morning, but she won't complain. She never does.

"...police have given up the search for the missing Tolliver child," the radio intones, "as family members increase the reward for information on the whereabouts of little Fantasia. More at the noon hour..."

Hatcher works on his coffee.

He senses Iris watching him, and when she reaches out and gently strokes the back of his hand he's not surprised. Hatcher knows the contours of her hand as intimately as his own work-scarred pair. And knows as well that she can sense the darkness welling up within him.

"Just a mood," he says. "A blue funk."

Iris smiles, a sad, knowing smile. "It's okay, Henry."

"All right, then," Henry says, and lets out a breath he didn't realize he was holding. "It's more than a funk. "

"The miasma?"

His silence answers for him.

Abruptly he rises, drains his cup, grabs his keys from the hook beside the door. "Got to get," he tells her. "Be late for work."

He gives her a brief hug, trying for nonchalant but desperately drinking in the love shining from her eyes.

He starts to turn, but she grips his forearms and looks him square in the eye. She raises a hand, and he feels her fingers gently touch the indention in the side of his head. Her fingertips travel downward, tracing the livid scar radiating from the indention, across his right temple and down his cheek like the tail of a comet.

"You're a good man, Henry," she says. "Don't ever think otherwise."

Her words give him the strength to open the door and head out to do what needs to be done.

* * * * *

In his truck, driving out Highway 53. Radio blaring, some asshole car salesman spouting market-speak, how he can give you a deal on your trade-in to beat the Devil. Henry drives slow and careful. The miasma rides him like the angel of death on a pale horse. When the miasma is in the saddle, he can't trust his reactions—or his senses.

The early morning sun streaming through his windshield has a sharpness to it, wields an edged razor that cuts across his eyes. He squints ahead and as his truck approaches the outskirts of the city he spots the flashing lights—law-enforcement blue, EMT red. The bulk of two yellow buses block one lane.

Hatcher turns left, taking a back road route to the landfill where he works. He could wait in line with the other cars while the accident is cleared (he's not that late) but he's feeling antsy. Needs to be moving.

His round-about takes him through the heart of the city and as he passes the alley separating the Inn-Between Deli and the Green Grocer he finds himself slowing. His eyes flick to the alley.

He slows to a crawl, sweat suddenly beading the back of his neck. His head is pounding, and he stares intently into the shadowed mouth of the alley.

Looks just like any alley, narrow and utilitarian, strewn with trash and old boxes.

But something is there. He senses movement—a dark, writhing, unseen presence. Weak now, but gathering strength. Gathering potential.

Behind him, a horn blares. He shakes his head and wipes a trembling hand across his face. He gently presses the gas and the truck eases forward.

Potential, he thinks. Can't dwell on that now.

One thing at a time.

He arrives at the landfill, drives through the gate. Parks in his spot next to the cavernous building where dump trucks are already maneuvering, accompanied by their harsh, strident beeping songs, to shed their loads of detritus cast off by the city. He shuts the truck down, gently touches the yellowing photograph of Toby taped to his dash, and slides out.

Hatcher notices that the county work detail is already hard at it, spreading the garbage coughed up from the maws of the dump trucks. Even at this hour the room is kicking, trucks and dozers vying for position. A stench of diesel and curdled milk assails his nostrils as he enters the building and heads for the office to clock in.

Maria, the short, fat county deputy in charge of the work detail, meets him at the door. She smiles.

"'Morning, handsome," she says. "You going to ignore me?"

"Sorry, 'Ria. Off my feed this morning."

She scans a clipboard gripped loosely in one meaty hand. "You're out on Cell C-4 today. Need one of my boys to help out?"

"Naw," Hatcher answered. "Just fill and tamp work. How's Tillie?"

"She's still knocked up, if that's what you mean. Gonna' pop any time now. "

Her smile flashes. "Ever since she found out it's gonna' be a girl, she's about drove me crazy, trying to think up a good name for her." She laughs, her belly quivering.

"That boy going to stand by her?"

"He damn well better, he knows what's good for him. He says so, and I think he will. He's a good boy, deep down. Raised right."

She speaks with a desperate conviction, but Hatcher knows the odds on that, the boy runs with a gang. He elects to stay silent.

He clocks in, waves to Maria, and heads out to his dozer.

Time to work.

* * * * *

Hatcher rides the dozer out the narrow access road carved through the clay of the landfill, over the finished cells, already filled and tamped and slowly digesting their tons of solid waste. Most of these cells are bare tan earth, awaiting grass. A scattering of vent pipes—access to environmental testing wells—dot the surreal landscape like exclamation points.

Hatcher tries not to think about all the things underground here. The trash, garbage and junk, the rejected refuse from the city. Fermenting a few feet under his dozer tracks.

And other things, under the earth. Lost and forgotten, slowly decaying.

He shivers, turns up the radio in the dozer's cab—some right-wing talking head.

"...is off and running. If he wants that second term, he'll have to own up to the promises he made during the campaign..."

Hatcher tops out on the landfill's artificial plateau and cuts cross-country, heading for the open pit of Cell C-4. He can smell the stench of decaying garbage even though the cab is sealed and air-conditioned. He glances out the window. Seagulls wing lazily over the cell, dipping and rising. Here and there buzzards feed, hopping about with an ungainly gait. Fifty yards away, a mangy dog—or a coyote—works through the mess, seeking a meal.

Hatcher stops the dozer, shuts off the engine, and climbs down.

He stands on the edge of the pit. The stench is far worse outside the cab, wafting over the lip of the cell like noxious waves from a polluted sea. He covers his nose and mouth with a bandanna, and stares to the far side of Cell C-4. To where Cell C-3, completed two weeks ago, steams in the late-summer heat.

Hatcher stares intently at Cell C-3. There is nothing to differentiate it from the other capped and tapped cells. Just bare, compacted earth, the ever-present vents thrusting up from the earth like the sparse, rotted teeth of a corpse's jaw. Nothing special about Cell C-3. No indeed.

A buzzard wheels around in a long parabolic arc that takes it out and over the cell. As Hatcher watches, the buzzard veers sharply left, away from the empty space, its shrill cry of alarm piercing the air as it speeds away.

A few seagulls on final approach to the open garbage smorgasbord pass over Cell C-3, but circle wide to avoid the same spot.

Hatcher knows that rats also keep away from the place. Coyotes will have nothing to do with it. Even flies won't stray into that open space.

The miasma settles over his shoulders like a wet, clinging blanket. The sun seems to dim.

Hatcher squares his shoulders, climbs back into the dozer, and rumbles around the festering open pit to Cell C-3.

* * * * *

He stands on the plateau. A soft wind ruffles the sparse hair fringing his bald spot.

He doesn't want to be here—Lord, take this cup from me—but is resigned to it. Has been for some time now.

Before him is one of the environmental testing vents, required by the EPA. It penetrates through the clay cap into the rotten core of the landfill below.

Hatcher stares at it, and slowly it fades out of focus as his mind takes him back over eight years ago.

He's leaving the Dairy Queen. Seven year-old Toby is in the passenger seat beside him, giggling and licking at a soft-serve vanilla cone.

Toby is spending the night with his granddad. They've just seen their local high school football team whip their rivals and win the region championship, and they're on their way home.

They're on rain-slick Highway 53 when the SUV comes over the hill on their side of the road, high beams blazing. Blinded, Hatcher hits the brakes, tries to swerve. The SUV swerves, also, but too late. Its front bumper strikes his sedan a glancing blow. The car looses traction, spins twice, slides at speed into a ditch.

Hits a culvert. Flips. Rolls...

Hatcher comes to with rain and blood in his eyes. He's lying in the ditch. The crushed car is on its side, half in the road. He can't seem to move.

Where's Toby? His eyes twitch, frantically searching. Then he sees the boy, kneeling beside him. The driver of the SUV has turned around and pulled to the shoulder. Spears of harsh light envelop them.

Toby is sobbing, hands fluttering over Hatcher like a bird, afraid to touch his broken body.

Something passes through the light, and Hatcher's eyes twitch towards the motion. A man is stumbling towards them, barely able to stand. The SUV driver.

Toby, crying. His scalp is bleeding. He's holding one arm tight against his chest.

"My Pawpaw. He's hurt. Help him, please help him!"

The man sways above them. Hatcher smells rain and gasoline mixed with tequila.

"Oh my God," the man says.

"Please, help my Pawpaw," Toby cries. "He's hurt..."

"Wait...wait," the man stammers. He runs his fingers jerkily through his hair. With the light behind him, Hatcher can't make out the man's features. "Just...wait!"

The man backs up, lurches around, and stumbles back to his SUV. Hatcher hears a door open, then close with a hollow clunk. Then he's coming back, silhouetted by the light. Something long dangles from his right hand.

The stem of a car jack.

"Help us," Toby whispers, and the man swings the jack hard. It connects with Toby's head with a wet smack, driving the boy into the ground. Hatcher tries to scream, but can't make a sound.

The man swings the jack again and Hatcher hears a dull chock from the dark. Then the man is standing over him, breathing heavily, clutching the jack almost protectively across his chest. His face is a featureless black hole in the glare from his SUV's headlights.

"You see...you see...it would be my third strike," he whispers. He lifts the jack again, hesitates—then brings it down on Hatcher's head.

* * * * *

Hatcher blinks and comes back to himself. He fingers the indented scar in the side of his head.

He was in the hospital for three months, in a coma for two. He missed his grandson's funeral.

The man who killed Toby, and tried to kill Hatcher, was never found.

Until later.

* * * * *

Hatcher eats his lunch in the air-conditioned office, with Maria looking on disapprovingly.

"You look like shit," she says, and Hatcher can almost agree with her.

The small T.V. on the corner of the work table blares out the news.

"...tsunami was thirty feet high, and relentless. It ravaged the village, destroying property and claiming over 150 lives..."

"Why don't you take the rest of the day off?" Maria says. Hatcher shakes his head.

"Not sick," he says. "Just tired. Didn't sleep so good last night."

"Sure you don' have something catching?"

He attempts a feeble smile. "Not unless insomnia is contagious."

She huffs up like a mother hen. "Maybe I should call Iris..."

"Won't do any good. She doesn't want me around when I'm like this."

"...been a week since Mary Ellen Lewis, the mother of two, disappeared without a trace," the T.V. drones. "Family and friends will hold a candlelight vigil tonight at Faith Baptist Church. Her sister still believes she will be found safe..."

Maria leaves him alone. He finishes his sandwich and heads for the door.

Just before leaving, he turns back to Maria.

"Fantasia. A good name for a baby girl. Name her Fantasia."

He slips out before she can pester him further.

* * * * *

The light is fading as Hatcher spreads a last pile of garbage in an even layer over already compacted trash. Tomorrow he'll put down a clay seal over this layer, before starting on the next one.

He drives the dozer up the slope, around the rim to Cell C-3.

Parks the dozer, gets out. Starts walking.

He feels the change in the atmosphere when he crosses the boundary of the dead space. A wave of damp cold washes over him.

He stands before the vent, shivering in the warm sun. He hugs himself tight.

The miasma envelopes him in a dark wave. He tries to swallow, but his mouth seems full of ash.

He feels no fear, just an all-encompassing sorrow.

The warmth of the late September sun has faded, and when he looks at it, the bright disk seems rimmed with black.

When he looks back, he sees the girl.

She is a black girl and small, dressed in a yellow sundress. Her feet are bare. She rocks slowly back and forth from heel to toe, her hands behind her back.

You must witness, Hatcher thinks. He squints, and another image of the girl flickers over the first. Great gashes cross her body. Her shift is torn and bloody. Blood fills the holes where her eyes used to be.

He squeezes his own eyes shut. When he opens them, the girl is gone.

His heart races, and sweat slicks his face. He staggers. A darkness settles over him. Tons of clay and garbage, pressing down for eternity. He falls to his knees before the vent, under the crushing weight of the landfill.

He exhales a ragged breath. His heart pounds with an erratic rhythm, and his vision dims.

And a voice, dry and wintry, rises from the vent.

"Tell him," the voice says. Hatcher strains to hear over the bellowing of his heart.

"There is a heaven..."

* * * * *

He drives though the subdivision, his headlights white-washing the road. He is searching for a specific address number painted on the curb.

The houses are clustered close together in this upscale, green-space community. Not overly expensive, but they surely cost a good bit more than he can afford.

As he navigates the surface streets, his eyes search while his mind wanders to the past.

He's out of the hospital, feeble but ambulatory, hobbling with a cane from the steel holding his hip together. His body is healing. But his mind...

The miasma comes upon him for the first time three days after he's released form the hospital, a leaden shadow of harrowing anxiety that threatens to crush his spirit. He tries to hide it from Iris, but she can sense that something is not right.

His sleep is filled with nightmare images. Of women, all strangers, writhing under the assault of brutal men. Little girls being molested, then killed and thrown into dumpsters like so much garbage. Kids snatched from their own neighborhoods by faceless men in dark cars, used savagely, and then murdered out-of-hand.

And one bleak, rain-swept day he finds himself standing on the shoulder of Highway 53, sweating and trembling on the spot where Toby had died.

Cars whip past, buffeting him, but he hardly notices. His attention is riveted to the concrete culvert.

A surge of storm water flows fast along the bottom of the ditch, disappearing into the culvert's black maw.

Hatcher limps closer, not wanting to, but his will is like a leaf caught in the ditch-water current, sucked relentlessly towards darkness. He walks jerkily, then faster, suddenly losing his balance and falling to his hands and knees, his cane spinning away. He crawls, sobbing softly, eyes locked on the black opening of the culvert.

He's in the ditch now, runoff water soaking his slacks, his shoes ruined. His rain-soaked shirt is plastered to his back, and water streams into his eyes. He can barely see.

But he can hear.

A voice emanates from the pipe, barely perceptible, brittle and lost and oh so loved.

"PawPaw...you must bear witness..."

* * * * *

Hatcher glimpses the number from the corner of his eye—515 Allison Street.

He slows, turns into the drive. Kills the engine. Opens the glove box, and slips on a pair of thin leather gloves.

He gets out. The night air is crisp, fall coming on. Good. He slips on a light windbreaker, knowing it won't look out of place on a cool fall evening.

He stands beside his car, studying his surroundings.

The house is still and quiet. The pale glimmering light of a T.V. filters through the drawn curtains. In the drive sits an old Mustang, patched and primed. A red "For Sale" sign is attached to the windshield.

Hatcher limps up the walk, skirting a tricycle turned on its side. He grimaces at the ramifications, but blots them from his mind.

On the stoop, he rings the bell.

He hears movement, and then the door opens. A thirty-something man is standing before him, frowning. He's lanky and thin, dressed in pajama bottoms and a tank top and holding a newspaper.

"Help you?" he asks. Hatcher looks him in the eye. Forces a smile.

"Paul Jordan?"

"Yeah?"

"I was visiting a friend and noticed your Mustang. Thought maybe I could look it over?"

The man smiles. "Yeah, sure. Come on in. Let me get a shirt on and we'll..."

Hatcher steps inside, eyes roving. Recliner, couch, coffee table, lamps. No one in the living room. The volume on the T.V. is not loud, but it will do. Somewhere in the depths of the house, he hears the faint sound of a shower running.

The man is fumbling into a faded sweat shirt when he pauses. He turns, and stares at Hatcher quizzically. "How'd you know my name?"

Hatcher's right hand slips into his coat pocket as he places his left against the man's chest and gives a hard shove. Startled, the man staggers. His balance gone, he sprawls heavily on the recliner as Hatcher frees the .22 and brings it up.

The man's eyes widen. "What..." he starts to say, but Hatcher beats him too it.

"Fantasia Tolliver says to tell you there is a heaven—and a hell."

He waits just long enough for the man to recognize the name, for the look of horror and understanding to twist his features.

Hatcher squeezes the trigger.

There's a sharp pop, the gun jumps a bit, and a neat hole appears just above Jordan's right eye. He slumps further, his eyes rolling in his head.

Hatcher crosses quickly to him, puts the gun to the man's temple, and touches off three more rounds.

Then he turns and leaves, closing the door softly behind him.

* * * * *

He drives home slowly, the window down, enjoying the cool night air. The miasma is gone. He feels tired, like at the end of a hard day of honest labor.

As he drives, he fiddles idly with the radio.

"...have any information on the disappearance of Mary Ellen Lewis, please call the city police department at..."

What is it about some men, Hatcher muses, that make them victimize the weak? Prey on women and children. Molesting, beating, raping. How do these animals justify what they do? How can they kill the innocent, cut them up, dispose of the bodies like so much garbage?

A vision of the tricycle, on its side next to the walk, flashes through his mind. He squeezes his eyes shut, forcing the image down.

Why is it that so many of them have families? Kids and wives of their own? And the neighbors never seem to suspect. He was such a nice man, they say about the few that are caught. Always friendly and helpful. So normal.

Who would have thought.

He tries to wrap his mind around it, but answers elude him.

His thoughts turn to Cell C-3, and what lies buried there. He knows it will rest easy now. He has borne witness.

Tomorrow, he'll disassemble the pistol, take the parts to the landfill, and distribute them over the floor of Cell C-4. Like so many forgotten things, the parts will disappear forever, under tons of trash.

Hatcher yawns, and tightens his grip on the steering wheel. He'll rest tonight, his first good night's sleep in over a week. But already he senses shadows coalescing, just at the periphery of awareness. The miasma will return, and he will be unable to resist it.

(dark alley, between grocery and deli. A gathering of potential...)

Something lost and forgotten, awaiting witness.

He thinks about Paul Jordon. And the emptiness he'd glimpsed behind his eyes.

Jordon makes nine now, since the one who killed Toby. But that bit about his name—almost made a mistake there.

Have to be more careful in the future.

He drives on, then abruptly sits up straight and clenches the wheel hard as a thought hits him like an electric shock.

Technically, I'm a serial killer.

Then, absurdly—I'll need to get another gun.

He drives on, not feeling the tears sliding down his cheeks.

* * * * *

At home, in his familiar bedroom, Hatcher lies on the edge of the bed as Iris rubs his shoulders.

"Want to talk about it?" she asks.

Hatcher is quiet for a moment, but then he sighs.

"My father once told me," he says quietly, "that the measure of a man is not determined by celebrity, or wealth, or fame, but by how well he handles the dirty work. The jobs vital to the survival of civilization." He rolls over and looks at Iris, a quiet anguish in his eyes. "Tell me again, Iris. Am I a good man?"

She touches his face, traces his scar, and smiles her gentle smile. "You do God's work, Henry. The work no one else can do. You bear witness—and take out the garbage."

For Iris

Rest in Peace, Innocent One

Bygones

...from the Gainesville Times

August 26, 2002—

Gunfight in Gainesville Leaves Three Dead

Three people died and two were injured in an early evening shoot-out in Gainesville that, according to police, appears to be drug related.

Killed in the incident were Martin Alverez, 34, of 614 Highland Street, and Turk "Mo Jo" Jones, 32, Summit Street Apartments. Celia Porter, 22, and Tina Alverez, 30, also of Highland Street, were admitted to the North East Georgia Medical Center for treatment of lacerations.

Also pronounced dead at the scene was Edwin Goss, 79, of 611 Highland Street, the man police suspect instigated the shooting.

Authorities are baffled as to the motive behind Goss's actions.

A quantity of crack cocaine found at the scene led police to suspect the house was used as an outlet for drug distribution. Alverez and Jones had prior convictions on drug related offenses.

The incident remains under investigation.

July 28, 2002—

The room is windowless, without doors or visible means of ingress. Small, compact, tight, the floor awash in shadow. Yet there is no sense of confinement, no claustrophobia. The four walls seem to rise from the shadowy floor as a submarine rises from the depths, seeking the sun. Far above the floor, the walls gather light, brighten, seeming to merge in shimmering radiance.

As always, the only object in the room is the iron cage.

Inside, the crickets wait. Silent, expectant.

No chirping mars the pristine silence of the room. There is only the soft rasp of countless antennae, delicately sensing.

Unmoving, the crickets stare upward.

Into the shimmering light.

* * * * *

Edwin Goss awoke a minute before the alarm rang.

He pawed the clock radio, found the switch, and thumbed it off. Remnants of some dream clouding his mind, he blinked sleep away and waited for his body to acknowledge another day.

When he felt he could face the morning, he threw the sheet back and stood, reveling in the relative coolness of the house in early morning.

He stretched, his joints cracking, then slipped out of his pajamas and into threadbare sweats. As the murky light of dawn sifted through the bedroom curtains, he began his routine.

First the stretching, bending, flexing, muscles tight and protesting, loosening slowly, warming to the challenge. Pushups next—strict military posture, eighty this morning—he'd try for eighty-five tomorrow. On to sit-ups without pause, three hundred bent knee crunches. No jump rope today—his knee was acting up again. All things considered, he thought he was hanging together pretty well.

He hit the shower, running it hot. Steam fogged the cracked bathroom mirror. The water pressure was nil, but it felt damn good just the same. He closed his eyes and turned his face to the spray.

Edwin toweled off quickly in the living room, the cool air of morning already conceding to dawn's hot breath. He scowled at the ancient room air conditioner, silent and defeated, sagging in the corner window. It had given up the ghost back in May.

He slipped into tan corduroy trousers and a pale yellow sports shirt, then pulled on his coat. He combed his white hair, thinning somewhat now, and carefully trimmed the matching mustache. One more close scrutiny in the mirror...satisfied, he stepped into the bedroom for his keys.

On his way out, he paused at the big bookcase in the foyer. Ceiling-high and half the width of the wall, it was filled to over-flowing with a riot of reading material. Paper and hardback books competed for scarce shelf space. More rested against the wall in neat, orderly stacks, close by the crowded bookcase.

For an instant his eyes touched the three unfinished novel-length manuscripts on the top shelf, his own fledgling attempt at writing fiction. All, for one reason or another, had died stillborn. He had never attempted a fourth.

With a forefinger Edwin plucked a book from its niche, tucked it under an arm, and headed out the door.

He crossed the sagging porch, taking the steps carefully, favoring the knee. His old Buick—the War Horse—waited in the drive, paint flaking, cancerous rust splotching the roof, hood and rear. She cranked just fine, however, when Edwin twisted the key.

He waited for the engine to warm, for the knocking, grumbling, hitching sounds to smooth out, for the tired transmission to wake up. Then he fought the War Horse into reverse and backed carefully into Highland Street, engine stuttering.

He idled a moment in the empty street. The houses lining both sides of Highland were quiet, reminding Edwin of a western ghost town. Inside, he knew, school-free children stared vacantly at morning cartoons. Mothers in natty robes had returned to bed or breakfast or the bottle. Those few husbands who worked had already left. The rest snored, deep in the dreamless, guilt-free sleep of the useless.

From the vantage point of his porch rocking chair Edwin had long ago learned the street's rhythm, the patterns of living within the neighborhood. He observed his neighbors with the cultivated invisibility developed during his journalistic tenure at the Gainesville Times. He took solace from the fact that he had once been a newspaper reporter. A writer, by God. Unpublished but for a batch of forgettable news stories and a few public interest pieces, but a writer, none-the-less.

He shifted into drive and stepped on the gas, glancing once at the house on his left—614 Highland. The druggie's house. The house was run down, its paint hanging in gray strips—not unlike most of the homes along Highland. A well-kept Pontiac Trans Am gleamed from the gravel drive. Edwin's lips tightened, the old anger flaring. He'd seen the kids come, hollow eyed and haunted. They would park along the shoulder of I-985, climb the guardrail and ease down the steep, pine-buffered embankment behind the houses. He'd seen them slip into 614 and emerge later with their treasures. It was no secret what went on there.

He forced his eyes away. It was none of his concern.

Edwin turned left on McKenzie. A few miles further, he took the on-ramp for I-985 and headed towards Gainesville, two exits north.

He glanced at the book on the seat beside him and smiled, his dark mood lifting. He forgot about the air conditioner, and the fact that his money was almost gone. Forgot his bad knee and bum Buick, and shoved the sour thoughts of the crack house into a back drawer of his mind. He was going to see Marshall—that was all that mattered.

Visiting Marsh at the nursing home.

* * * * *

Edwin stood before the directory, chewing his mustache. Huge and imposing, the directory resembled a refugee from an office building—out of synch, he thought, in a facility like Summer Hill. It was as if the presence of the directory, with its neat columns of names and room numbers, was an attempt at providing a sense of normalcy, a way of saying, sure, you're all here, this is your home, this is where you'll live out your lives, and waste away, and die—but you're still folks, important people. You even have your own addresses, what the hey?

He scanned the directory, searching for Marshall's name.

It wasn't there.

Something seemed to tear loose in his chest. Darkness spiraled in on him, and he steadied himself with a hand against the wall.

Voices—heading his way. Two orderlies, one short, the other gangly, sauntered down the hall, hands thrust deep into pockets, legs moving with the loose-jointed confidence of youth. He heard laughter, soft talk. They started past him without a glance.

Edwin held up a hand. The orderlies stopped.

Edwin gestured to the directory, swallowed, found his voice.

"The man in 102. What happened to him?"

The orderlies exchanged glances. Tall tugged a comb from a back pocket, pulled it through lank, greasy hair. "Don't know, man. Check the front desk."

Dazed, Edwin started away. The orderly took his arm, pointed down the hall. His voice was thick with the heavy patience of one dealing constantly with the elderly. "No, no, man. Over there."

Edwin blinked, saw the nursing station, sterile clad women gathered about.

I know where it is, he thought, and walked away without thanking the orderly. Behind him, he heard more laughter. He ignored it.

He hovered, hat in hand, as the charge nurse gossiped with her friends. Finally he cleared his throat, the sound scraping across the women's conversation.

The nurse glanced at him, kept talking. He waited a moment and tried again. She turned to him then, her smile flashing white.

"May I help you?" Her voice was loud, condescending—the orderly in drag.

"Marshall Grant. I went to his room—someone else is there. His name is gone from the directory." His throat was tight. "Could you tell me where he is?"

The nurse frowned. "Grant—we moved him." She consulted a list. "Room 148, west wing." She smiled again, another hundred-watt smile, a toothpaste ad come to life. She would go home tonight, Edwin thought, take a shower, maybe go out later with friends. Then home again, a quick swim, and to bed—to sleep or, maybe, to make love.

Young and alive, forever and ever, amen.

"I'm sorry if you've been inconvenienced," the nurse said. "Sometimes housekeeping forgets to place the new numbers in the directory. Just go down the hall, take a left..."

"I can find it," Edwin said, and turned away.

He moved down a hall spiced with the scent of industrial disinfectant and stale urine, overlaid with cloying orange-scented air freshener. Everywhere, the denizens of Summer Hill were in evidence. Aged men in faded bathrobes, worn slippers clinging to pallid feet, shuffled carefully from room to room. Old women delicately negotiated the hallways, placing walkers with exaggerated care. A wheelchair rolled in front of him, its occupant bent and wizened, pushed along by a bored looking orderly wearing a Walkman.

Edwin passed an open door, glanced inside. The TV was on, its volume muted. The only light was the spreading radiance from the tube. It fell across the figure on the bed, an ancient woman, painting her sparse white hair with highlights of flickering silver. Her jaw hung slack, and shadows moved in her cavernous mouth. She slept, eyes half-open. An I.V. doled life into her arm. She lay alone, in the artificial twilight from the T.V screen.

Edwin snapped eyes front and quickened his pace.

The eyes of Summer Hill's inmates followed him as he passed, and he felt heat rise to his face. In their own way, the old folks were worse than the young nurses and orderlies. The staff treated him with the same exaggerated tolerance they did the residents. The eyes of the elderly, however, brimmed with bitter envy. They begrudged him his health, were jealous of his freedom. He represented their past lives—on the outside, looking in.

Edwin reached 148, west wing. Opened the door, stepped inside. The door sighed closed behind him.

Marshall lay in bed, grimacing. The head of the bed was raised, and a cantilevered bedside table hovered close under his chin. Danielle, Marshall's daughter, spooned something unrecognizable from a tray. Marshall tightened his lips, denying access.

"Jesus," Danielle snapped, and glanced up at Edwin's approach. "He won't eat, he's like a damn kid—what am I supposed to do, force feed him?"

"I told her I don't want it—she don't listen," Marshall said, then snapped his mouth shut as Danielle tried to take advantage of the opportunity presented.

"Shit!" She threw the spoon on the tray, exasperated.

"Maybe he's not hungry," Edwin said.

Danielle smirked. "He's being an asshole.

She looked at Marshall, sighed. "I need a cigarette. You try if you want."

She picked up her purse and moved to the door, her plump arms jiggling. "I may go out for awhile. Tell him I'll see him later."

The door cat-hissed closed behind her as Marshall yelled, "Tell me yourself, I ain't deaf, you know!"

Edwin cringed at the quiver in his friend's voice.

Marshall turned his head. Their eyes locked.

"She'll be back later," Marshall said, but his voice lacked conviction.

"Yeah," Edwin agreed, though he knew better. Danielle had used his entrance to make her escape.

Faint anger stirred. The woman hadn't seen her father for over a week. It'd be another week, or whenever guilt got the better of her, before she came again.

Edwin crossed to the bed, shoved the bedside table with the offending dinner aside. He sat, the chair still warm from Danielle's ample rump.

He looked at Marshall, and suddenly they grinned. He felt the warm flow of companionship, the close camaraderie he'd always shared with his friend.

"Bring a book?" Marshall asked.

"Right here." Edwin dug in his coat, drew forth a worn paperback. Sackett's Land, a Louis L'amour Bantam edition. Marshall laughed, his good eye alight. Before the stroke that had left him half-paralyzed and blind in one eye he had devoured westerns avidly. L'amour was his favorite author.

"Hot damn, a Sackett story. The hell with Danielle and her pasty food. Give me a good oater any day."

He settled back in bed and closed his eyes as Edwin opened the book.

Edwin read for over an hour, his voice quietly expressive. Time to time he would glance at Marshall, catch his friend's eye, and one or the other would wink, as if sharing a great secret.

Three chapters into the book, Marshall spoke, his voice small—another legacy of the stroke.

"Remember when we first met, Win?"

Edwin turned the book over on his lap, adjusted his glasses. He smiled, reminiscing.

"The church picnic. Out on the Chattahoochee all day in that decrepit canoe, under a June sun. You were the only one would go out with me."

"You got sunburned. Turned feverish later that evening."

"Had to stay in bed for two days of vacation."

"But then that Hollis girl—Cindy? She made it all better when she laid you right there in your pa's cabin."

"She had a thing for sick dogs and sunburned boys. To think all it took to get in her pants was a good roasting."

"Yeah. The agony and the ecstasy."

They laughed together, a binding tie. Marshall's breathing came quick, raspy.

"We've had us some good times, Win."

"Yeah. Some fine times."

"Even in the war. Even fightin' those damn Nips."

"Uh huh. It's a wonder we got to stay together. Most times friends that signed on at the same time were separated. We were lucky."

"Yeah. Lucky. If you hadn't been there that time in Guam..."

"But I was. Just like you were there for me on Sapporo. And that stinkin' bar in Honolulu."

They were quiet, reliving memories. When Edwin looked around, Marshall was staring at him.

"Wanna tell you something," Marshall said.

"What?"

"'Bout the war. You know, all that time, the fear, the uncertainty, always living on the edge?"

"Yeah?"

"I never felt so alive. Not before, not since. Like I was accomplishing something really worthwhile. Know what I mean?"

Edwin hesitated, nodded slowly.

"Yeah. I believe I do."

They were silent again, content with one another's company. Somewhere behind the closed door a telephone rang. It sounded muted, far away, part of another life.

"You ever think of Wendy, Win?"

"There are some things I try not to recall."

'You two were good together for a time."

"'Till little Sarah died. Wendy doted on that girl. Then David didn't make it home from Nam...it all kind of fell apart after that. Don't know why, really. Just happened."

"Wonder where she's at now?"

"Last I heard she'd moved to California—L.A. Went west for her health."

They looked at one another, then burst out laughing. The thought of anyone living in Smog City for their health was ludicrous.

Edwin wiped his eyes with a thumb and forefinger.

"How 'bout you? Ever miss Pam?"

For a long time Marshall didn't answer. When he did, his voice held an aching wistfulness that touched Edwin's heart.

"All the time."

He turned to Edwin, a note of wonder in his voice. "Isn't it funny? The woman's been dead for twelve years, but she's still in my head. I still think of her, pert and sassy—as if we were married just yesterday. Sometimes I feel I can reach out, touch her hand...

"You know, she never criticized me. Not once. Followed me to Montana that time, when I cowboyed on that ranch. Even when I worked the pipeline and she was alone for so long, she never complained."

Marshall sighed. "Yeah, I still miss her."

"But at least she gave you Danielle."

"Yeah. There's always Danielle."

They were both silent then, lost in their thoughts.

"With every year," Edwin said, "it gets harder. To remember, I mean."

Marshall didn't answer. Edwin was thinking he had drifted off to sleep when he did speak, his voice frail and feather-soft, cobwebs drifting down from the ceiling.

"I reckon memories are all we got left."

July 31, 2002—

Three days later, on the expressway heading to Summer Hill, Edwin's Buick died. One moment it was chugging along nicely—then the engine caught, coughed twice, belched a cloud of oily gray smoke, and locked up.

Edwin wrestled the powerless steering to the shoulder. He climbed out, wary. An eighteen wheeler barreled past, nearly blew him over the embankment.

Heat pressed brutally on his shoulders.

There was nothing to do but hoof it to the nearest exit. Edwin gritted his teeth and started walking.

He reached exit five an hour later, sweating and gritty with road dirt. His feet ached, and the bad knee throbbed in counterpoint to the staccato rhythm of his heart. His body felt worn out, dehydrated form the slipstream of hot wind generated by the constant, buffeting torrent of traffic.

He plodded up the exit and spied a Kangaroo store a hundred yards from the ramp. It took a while to negotiate the distance. He went inside, blessing the air conditioned coolness, and bought a huge iced Coke, gulping half at once. He paid for the drink, then used his change to call a wrecker.

He spent the afternoon at Hardy's Auto Stop. Hardy performed a postmortem on the Buick. It took the mechanic two hours to get into the engine, two minutes to tell Edwin there was nothing he could do for it other than a transplant.

Exhausted, Edwin took the bus home, shrugged out of his stale clothes, and fell into bed.

His dreams were filled with images of crickets in a cage—hundreds of crickets, staring out at him in silence.

Waiting.

August 1, 2002—

Morning found Edwin on the mid-town bus, heading to Summer Hill.

He told Marshall about the car, but his friend's only response was a weak grunt. Marshall seemed tired, disoriented. He lay like a corpse, staring at the ceiling, as Edwin read to him from Sackett's Land. His gnarled fingers plucked listlessly at the sheets.

Finally Edwin laid the book aside.

"You feeling all right?" he asked.

"Yeah—just tired."

They shared silence for a moment. Marshall turned to him, eyes intense.

"You think Sackett ever found it?"

"What—found what?"

"Whatever he was looking for. Beyond the far blue mountains. Whatever it was he left England to find."

Edwin shifted in his chair, contemplating. "Don't rightly know. He found love. A family. The land. And freedom. Is there anything else?"

For a long time Marshall didn't reply. Then he answered, his voice weak. "Every time I think on it, seems he might have been looking for something more."

"Like what?"

" Answers, maybe? Hell, I don't know."

But Edwin had the feeling that Marshall did know.

"I want to sleep now," Marshall said. He turned his face to the wall.

August 4, 2002—

There was no money to get the Buick fixed, no cash for another car. Edwin took the bus whenever he went out.

He didn't like the bus. He would sit by himself and read, an island in a sea of strange faces, all younger than himself.

At home of an evening he would sit on his porch—the house was his, anyway, the mortgage paid in full over twenty years ago—sip a gin and tonic, and listen to the night coming on. There was something soothing in that. The last of the light fading in the west, the children's voices stilled as, one by one, they were called to supper by their moms. And then twilight would fade to purple evening, and the crickets would begin to sing—tentative at first, then with increasing exuberance, until the night was filled with eloquent insect song.

Edwin loved the crickets, could sit and listen to their music for hours. Sometimes he fancied he could pick out individual insect melodies over the rousing chorus.

He remembered reading somewhere that the Emperors of China kept crickets in gilded cages, just to hear them sing.

Once he'd thought that a fine thing. But now he knew better—nothing belonged in a cage. Not crickets nor canaries nor animals in a zoo.

He had learned that from experience.

Not from physical incarceration—he had never been locked up. But there were other kinds of confinement, welded prisons of a man's own making.

Cages of the soul.

Edwin was painfully familiar with these, could see caged souls in the heavy, hopeless faces of the Summer Hill folk, and the darting, dilated eyes of young addicts.

No, he had realized long ago that animals were meant to be free.

As were people, for that matter. Unless they were criminals—predators against society.

He sipped his drink, his mind steeped in melancholy.

A flicker of movement caught his eye. He squinted into gathering shadows across the street, where the Alverez place squatted on its weed choked lot.

A figure emerged from the darkness, resolved into a lanky teenage boy, sliding across the lawn to the front steps. Edwin's lips thinned as he watched the boy climb the steps and tap on the door. His movements were the nervous, jerky motions of the strung out junky.

A vertical slit of light appeared in the darkness beyond the porch. Edwin thought for an instant that he saw another form silhouetted in the partially open doorway. Then the youth slipped inside, and the door closed silently behind him.

Edwin's anger at the drug dealing was matched only by his frustration that nothing had been done about it. The flow of users looking to buy their candy had increased from a trickle to a stream since Alverez had rented the place, and more than once Edwin had called the police to report what he had seen. But all he got was formal, polite rebuff—and nothing had been done.

Every evening, new kids passed through Martin Alverez's candy store. It galled Edwin to the bone.

He waited awhile, but the youth didn't emerge.

The gin slipped up on him, warm and welcome as a lover's embrace. His eyelid's drooped.

He fought sleep—too much like death—but eventually his body succumbed to fatigue and he went inside.

As he lay in bed, sweating in the evening heat, he thought he heard the Alverez's screen door close across the street.

August 5, 2002—

The strident ringing of the phone jarred Edwin from a sound sleep.

"He wants pictures," Danielle sounded exasperated. "Wants you to bring all your old snapshots. He's in one of his moods."

Edwin smiled. "Tell him I'll be there in an hour."

He did an abbreviated workout, showered, skipped breakfast, and pawed through his closet until he located the ragged shoe box brimming with old photos—a lifetime on Kodachrome. He tucked it under his arm, grabbed a coat, and headed out to catch the bus.

When he opened the door to Marshall's room he had to smile. Marsh was almost lost amidst a jumble of bedclothes and photographs. Pictures flowed over the bed, spilled onto the floor. An empty manila envelope lay discarded at the foot of the bed.

"You bring 'em?" Marshall asked.

"Right here." Edwin showed him the box.

Danielle moved pictures from a chair beside the bed and Edwin took a seat. He broke open the taped box, and for the next hour the two friends rummaged among the old pictures, seining through the past like archeologists excavating ancient ruins.

"Look, here," Edwin said softly. He held up a yellowed photo. Two young men in army fatigues and G.I. buzz cuts grinned out at them.

"God damn, were we ever that young?"

"Or that naive?"

Marshall fingered a snapshot of his younger self, one brawny arm encircling the waist of a pretty woman with tired eyes. A tow-haired little girl clasped his other hand tightly. The three posed next to a stall, with horses in the background. The girl wore a straw cowboy hat and tiny boots. "Here's me and Pam and Dani, when she was four."

Danielle glanced up from where she sat hunched over her cross word. Her stare was flat, noncommittal.

"My first rodeo," Marshall said.

Edwin smiled. "Busted four ribs, as I recall."

"Five," Marshall said absently. He touched the picture, fingers caressing glossy images, then tossed it back in the box.

Edwin laughed. "Why the hell you think Pam put up with that rodeo shit as long as she did?"

Marshall looked up at him, a hesitant smile hovering on his lips. "Because...she was Pam." His good eye shone.

Edwin removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes.

After a moment, he started picking through the pictures again.

"Hey, look here." He held up a group of ragged-edged snapshots, fuzzy, out of focus.

Marshall grinned. "Your wedding," he rasped.

"Or a wake," Edwin answered.

Marshall spread the pictures out on his chest. "Look—the shots we took at your place before the ceremony."

The pictures were of two men, younger versions of Edwin and Marshall, posing in wedding finery—black pin-stripe suits, white linen shirts, crew-cuts gleaming with Vitalis.

The only things out of the ordinary were the guns.

Edwin smiled out at the camera, a hogleg pistol nesting in a black leather holster strapped low on his hip. A flat-crowned black hat was canted rakishly over one eye. Marshall stood beside him, one arm draped loosely over his shoulder, the other cradling a rifle in the crook of his elbow.

Edwin laughed. "Were we two fools or what?"

Marshall thumbed through the snapshots, held up one of Edwin frozen in an exaggerated fast draw, the big pistol extended in front of him.

"You could handle that thing pretty well."

"Always was more comfortable with a handgun than a rifle. Even in the war."

"Whatever happened to that gun?"

Edwin shrugged. "I still have it somewhere."

"Never sold it, huh?"

Edwin looked at him. "Why would I? It was a gift from you."

Marshall sighed, settled back in bed. "Thought, you know, with your money problems and all..."

"I don't need much. House is paid for. Every once in a while I sell an article..."

"Those damned bastard bankers. Steal a man's money, and all they got was a slap on the wrist."

Edwin grinned. "We're not in the old West, boy. They don't hang bankers anymore."

Marshall snorted. "They should. People trusted them. Some lost everything they had put back."

"Water over the dam. I get by."

They looked at the pictures for a few more minutes.

Danielle set aside her crossword, stretched, and went out. The door hissed closed behind her.

Marshall glanced at Edwin from his good eye, and there was something there that Edwin couldn't read.

"You still got your bottle?" Marshall asked.

Edwin hesitated. "Yeah. Ninety proof vodka. Squirreled away in the back cabinet. Haven't thought of it in years. You got yours?"

"Uh huh. But somehow I think you'll be the one making that last toast."

Edwin looked away. His throat felt tight. "No need to talk that way. Got a good mind to pour that crap down the drain."

"Hell, don't do that. We made a vow, remember? When one goes, the other drinks a toast to his memory."

"We were youngsters. Fresh out of the army." He glanced at Marshall, was surprised to find him smiling gently.

"Some vows are forever, Win. When the time comes, pull out the bottle. Make the toast. See me off in style."

August 6, 2002—

The jangle of the phone jarred Edwin awake. It was Danielle.

Marshall had suffered a second stroke.

* * * * *

He was hospitalized for two weeks, and then they moved him back into Summer Hill. A new room, now, one that came with a nurse. The flagrant directory in the lobby listed Marshall Grant, room 133. The name on the side of the door, under the little plastic cover, said the same. But Edwin knew better. It wasn't Marsh lying wasted in that bed, being fed from a tube and messing himself. It wasn't Marsh curled into contortions, his eyes filmed and empty, face slack, loose lips dribbling spittle that Danielle, grimacing in distaste, blotted from his chin with a damp washcloth. No, the Marsh he knew was still young, vibrant, the Rodeo Marsh, Marsh the Soldier, the Husband, the Lover. It wasn't Marsh in this antiseptic room, fading away before his eyes.

This was a stranger.

After awhile, Danielle stopped coming—she said she couldn't bear to see him this way and, besides, he didn't recognize her anyway.

Edwin brought books—Sackett's Land, and To the Far Blue Mountains—by L'amour and other western writers Marshall admired, and read to him.

The words went out, rolling from his tongue, and echoed off the walls.

Sometimes, as Edwin read, he wept, but of this he was unaware.

And then one morning, book in hand, he opened the door to 133 and found it empty, the bed stripped, fixtures polished, floor mopped and waxed to a high institutional gloss.

The harsh, clean smell of antiseptic permeated the air.

There was nothing of Marshall left in the room.

August 25, 2002—

Edwin awoke the morning of the funeral. He turned off the silent alarm, rose in the early chill, donned his sweats and commenced his workout. He completed the stretching by rote, strained for eighty-five push-ups. Panting, he lay on the floor, hooked his toes under the cold radiator, and started in on his sit-ups.

He was working towards two hundred when he slowed, stopped, sank to the floor.

For a long time he stared at a water stain spread out like an alluvial fan on the ceiling.

He sighed, pushed to his feet. He stripped off the sweats, tossed them in a corner.

His joints ached.

He stepped into the shower, into the blessed hot water, and stayed there, his face pressed against the wall, until the water began to cool.

* * * * *

The funeral was a small affair. Edwin and Danielle and a few of Danielle's friends were the only ones present. A minister who had never known Marshall, who had never seen him ride a horse or shoot a gun, had never taken a drink with him and talked of books and far places, seen him laugh and love, or heard him curse or sing in his off-key voice, droned on about his virtues.

Danielle cried some. Edwin left her comfort to her friends.

He had one last look at his friend before they sealed the casket. Marshall looked content, more like Marshall than he had in the nursing home. Edwin had trouble relating that man to the friend he had known for so long.

Before he left, he gently placed a book under Marshall's folded hands.

* * * * *

Staring out the dirty bus window, on his way home from the cemetery, it came to Edwin what Sackett had been looking for.

Edwin reached deep into his memory, trying to recall how the book went.

Sackett had crossed an ocean to find his mountains. He had won a lady and sired tall sons, and carved himself a home in the Appalachians. Then, in his elder years, the mountain man had left it all behind and headed for the western lands.

Over the years young Seneca warriors had used Sackett—a renowned fighter himself—as a testing ground for their manhood. To defeat Sackett in battle would be a glorious thing, would bring much honor to he who accomplished it. Many had tried. None had succeeded. Few had lived to tell the tale.

Edwin scowled. He remembered that, as the years stacked up behind him, Sackett had chosen to meet Death on his own terms. He had set out for one last great adventure, one final fight of honor, and had died under the war clubs of the Seneca.

Now Edwin turned the story over in his mind, as a connoisseur of wine would roll a fine vintage on his tongue. Sackett, growing old, had chosen to die with dignity. His family was established, spreading westward. The Sackett line would go on. His work was done, and he chose not to be a burden in his later years. He went outward, once more to test the Seneca, to give purpose to his ending.

Purpose.

Edwin thought about Marsh, in his final days—shrunken, shriveled body, bent and wasted, forced to wear a diaper, his once sharp mind dead and empty as his eyes.

He leaned against the bus window and the scenery rolled by, a blur of color that ebbed and flowed and merged into remembrance.

Of the war.

For Marsh, nothing had ever equaled that experience. He had traveled the country, seeking that elusive, will-of-the-wisp plateau. Drifting, ever searching. A cowpuncher on a Montana ranch. A stint on the Alaskan pipeline. But the itch could not be scratched. The urge to move, for something more, always set him on the road again.

He worked for awhile as a roustabout on a Louisiana oilrig, and later, in Houston, as a cleaner of industrial boilers. Jobs that didn't last. He moved on, dragging Pam and Danielle with him, a jack of all trades but master of none, searching for something, anything, that would put the meaning back into a life that had peaked in the Pacific theater. He chased the lie until Danielle grew up and away from him, until Pam was dead from exhaustion, and until Marshall himself had become a dried out old man with only fading memories of vague glory to warm his bed at night.

And then he had come home for good, because that was all there was left.

Edwin pressed his face against the cool, cool glass, his eyes squeezed tight. He tread dangerous ground here, he knew.

He realized now that Marshall had been hiding form himself, running scared—terrified of time stretching ever empty before him.

Edwin followed the trail of that thought and came face to face with himself.

He had lied to his friend before. When Marshall had told him that the war had been the pinnacle of his life, he had agreed. But there had been nothing noble or uplifting in his own war experiences. Over the years only one emotion had remained with him.

Fear.

He was no coward—at least, not in the physical sense. He had proved that more than once. His fear dwelled deeper, struck at fundamental underpinnings. He had seen the destruction accompanying war, the death of order and reason, and it had shaken him to his core.

He had thought he feared death. But that wasn't it at all.

What he feared most was the disruption and dissolution of change.

He could see it now, oh yes. The blinders were off, the shades pulled back. He had come out of the hell of the Pacific and created his haven, his own little world. Safe, sane, secure. Isolated from the pressures of reality.

He married Wendy, fathered children, had a family just as he was supposed to. He got a job at the Times as a copywriter, worked his way up to reporter. Eventually retired from there, gold watch and all.

Routine. He had lived for it.

Abruptly, he understood why his three novels remained unfinished. He could not bear to face what changes success might bring.

But no one could shut out change, or bar the door against fate.

Because shit happens.

Meningitis took Sarah. Wendy cried, needing him, but Edwin retreated into himself, strengthened his defenses. Routine to the rescue.

When David's plane disappeared somewhere over Nam, Edwin remembered how Wendy had begged him, pleaded, seeking comfort that he could not give. He had hurt too, Lord yes. But he had his exercises, his books, the safe and sane of sameness. Relentless routine.

Wendy left him not long after.

And when the savings and loan scandal rocked the nation, when his bank had gone bust, taking his life savings with it, he had gone on, keeping up appearances. It was all he could afford to do. A man in a cage, shackled by his fear of change, haunted now in his later years by the ghosts of lost opportunities.

He remembered Marshall, wasted form his final stroke, and how he had thought him a stranger. Now he realized the real Marshall had been dead for a long time—killed in a war over fifty years gone.

And God help me, he thought, so was I.

He opened his eyes. They felt gritty, hot.

He found that he could not recall his daughter's face.

The past was a shadow world, unrevealing. A closed book. Dead and buried, alongside Sarah, David, and the corpse of his marriage.

And Marsh.

So...what did he have left?

A duty. One last toast.

He sat up a little straighter as a long forgotten memory suddenly crystallized in his mind. He and Marshall, huddled over a table at some nameless sidewalk cafe in Honolulu. The setting sun a glorious burnt orange to the west. A solemn vow made, war and death a memory, their lives stretching before them like unbroken ripples in still water.

A final tribute to friendship, loyalty and trust.

Another thought brought him upright, and he laughed aloud at the irony. A middle-aged woman across the aisle shot him a quizzical glance, then turned quickly away at the look in his eye.

The war had forced on them something they had never been able to find in civilian life. It had given them focus. An all consuming objective.

The world order had been threatened; therefore it must be protected. That was the goal.

And the Japanese had been driven back, into the Nippon Sea.

A goal—nothing more. And they had lived for it.

A good many had died for it.

Purpose...

In his heart, a heavy cage door, closed fast for years, nudged open a crack. Behind the door, a cricket began a hesitant song.

* * * * *

On the way home from the funeral, Edwin made a stop. He stepped off the bus at the hardware store, made one purchase, then splurged and caught a taxi home.

* * * * *

Edwin turned his key in his front door just as the sun dipped behind the pines screening the interstate. The house was dark and empty, and the lamp Edwin turned on beside the couch provided little light, physical or spiritual.

Edwin stepped into the bedroom, rummaged briefly in the closet. He emerged carrying a polished wooden box under one arm. He took the box to the sofa, sank gratefully onto the cushions. He placed the box carefully on the coffee table.

For a long time Edwin sat unmoving, staring at the box.

He wasn't aware when he reached out and opened it.

The Colt 1940 Frontier .44 rested in red velvet. Oil gleamed along its length. It seemed to doze, but Edwin was well aware of the power residing within the cold metal.

He picked up the gun, marveling at the familiar feel of it, even though he hadn't held it in over fifteen years. The loading gate opened easily under his touch.

He checked the action, and it was as smooth as he remembered. He ran a finger along the length of the barrel. He'd filed off the front sight years before, removed the trigger and guard at the same time. He fired it by thumbing back the hammer, then releasing it, all one fluid motion.

Edwin remembered. He and Marshall, down by the creek. Sun-caressed early morning mist rising through a thin line of river birch fringing the water like the advancing front of some phantom army. Marshall positioning newspaper cores, remnants of newsprint rolls Edwin had confiscated from the local paper.

Then, standing back, hands dangling over the cut-down holster. Sweep down, draw, slip the hammer—the gun bucking, confetti blossoming from a newsprint core.

Then stop, fire, spin, fire...hit the ground, roll, and touch off three fast ones, the shots rolling as one.

Marshall's weapon was the rifle—but with a handgun, Edwin had been unequaled.

Edwin sat on the couch for a long time, the gun in his lap. Then he reached in the paper sack and drew out a small box—the item he had purchased at the hardware store. He opened the box and upended it in his lap. Metallic cartridges spilled out, glittering in the lamplight.

Edwin flicked open the loading gate and dropped in the shells, one by one.

* * * * *

He sat relaxed and at ease in a rocker on his front porch, where he and Marshall used to laze away the summer evenings. He carefully placed the hoarded bottle of vodka on the porch rail, beside two shot glasses he had taken from the upper shelf of the kitchen cupboard.

Beside the vodka bottle, the Colt gleamed dully in the moonlight.

Crickets sang, heralding in the evening.

The dilapidated house across the street crouched in shadow. A dim porch light painted the front stoop with streaks of faint yellow.

Edwin picked up the bottle, poured one full shot into a glass, repeated it with the other. His hand was steady—not a drop was wasted.

He replaced the bottle, lifted one of the shot glasses. He gazed over its rim at the house across the street. As if on cue, a dark figure emerged from the pines at the back of the house and sidled around to the front. Edwin could make out the faint pale oval of a face as the figure, a young girl, cast a furtive glance back over its shoulder.

The girl tapped on the door. It opened a crack, spilling dirty light. The girl darted inside.

Edwin raised the glass in salute.

"To Marshall," he said. "A true friend and a brother, if ever there was one."

He knocked off the vodka in one swift swallow, reveling to the heat as it exploded in his belly.

He sighed, satisfied, and slipped the cork back in the bottle.

He settled down to wait.

A cool breeze wafted across the porch, bearing the scent of fresh baked bread.

Edwin dozed.

After a few minutes, the screen door on the Alverez place creaked, and the girl stole away.

Crickets chirped within hidden places. From the distant interstate a car horn sounded, faint and forlorn.

Two shadows detached themselves from the wall of the house across the street, made their way across the weed-choked lawn to the front door.

Edwin stood. He picked up the pistol, went down the stairs, and walked casually down his front walk. He crossed the vacuum of the driveway where the War Horse used to be.

The two across the street had moved up the stairs, were knocking on the door. Kids, Edwin thought. Can't be over fifteen at the most.

Edwin reached the curb, stepped gingerly down, favoring his bad knee. He limped across the street to the opposite sidewalk.

The door to 614 Highland cracked open. Edwin caught mumbled words in Spanish.

He started up the walk.

The door opened further, and the two teenagers shuffled their feet. They were unaware of his approach, intent on talking to someone just inside.

Edwin climbed the steps, his knee throbbing. He stood just behind the boys, in the deep shadows of the porch roof.

The door swung wider and the boys slipped inside.

Edwin stepped in behind them.

The front door opened into a living room dimly lit by one bare overhead bulb. Edwin smelled over-ripe garbage and cat piss. Over the boy's shoulders a dark-skinned man, a Mexican in his early thirties, stared at him in wide-eyed surprise. On the floor behind that man, two others sat cross-legged. Plastic bags of white powder graced the low coffee table, along with an ash tray filled with cloudy, translucent crystals. A Starr .9 mm pistol lay beside them.

Two dusky girls were caught in the middle of raking more powder and crystals into small Ziploc bags.

They all stared at Edwin, their eyes huge, like deer pinned by a spotlight.

Without turning, Edwin pushed the door closed.

Now the two boys turned their heads, eyes glazed, gazing guiltily over their shoulders like adolescents caught masturbating.

Edwin raised the Colt where they all could see it.

He looked at the boys.

"Lie down, please," he said softly.

They stumbled back, collapsed to the floor, hugged the stained carpet.

The Mexican looked at Edwin incredulously. Nervous fingers edged towards a gun butt peeking from his waistband.

Edwin sighted down the Colt's blued barrel. Eared back the hammer.

The crickets were louder now. The cage door gained momentum, swinging wide.

"What is this?" the Mexican sputtered. "Some kind of bust?"

Edwin smiled. "No," he said gently.

He let his thumb slip. The hammer fell.

The cage door yawned wide to the sound of thunder.

And the crickets, in full song, took wing.

#

A Note From the Author

Thank's for purchasing "Equinox—Six Declinations". I hope you enjoyed it.

The books Edwin Goss reads to his friend Marsh in "Bygones"—Sackett's Land and To the Far Blue Mountains—were written by the late Louis L'amour, one of my favorite writers. He wrote a whole series of westerns following the adventures of the Sackett family as they lived and loved across the country. These two are the first in the series.

He also wrote many much more fiction and some non-fiction. If you'd like to check out more of Mr. L'amour's fiction, his website is http://www.louislamour.com/.

And for a preview of Seed, my upcoming novel, head over to  http://dragonlyre.com/preview-seed-an-upcoming-novel-by-richard-s-freeland/, my writing and publishing home website.

Again, thanks for taking a chance on "Equinox—Six Declinations". You might also like these:

"Communion"—a tale of terror and survival in the Sierras

"A History of Cats"—love is the cat's meow.

"Comeback"—some people will kill to win. Some will do far worse.

"Ironclad Contract"—the devil always gets his due.

"Drinking Problem"—the ultimate cure for DUI

"Any Minute"—when the vampires come, can Sloan save his family?

You can find these stories at Smashwords.com

There are more stories coming, so keep an eye out!

Kindest regards,

Richard Freeland

