Lover Arisen, page 8
Not that great an idea if he were trying to stay hidden in the darkness.
Also not so hot in a bad part of town.
So clearly he was armed.
“I don’t have anything. Sorry.”
Balz casually put a hand out. “I got three hundred.”
There was a pause. Then a pair of heavy-lidded eyes shifted in his direction. As they swept up and down his full height, it was like getting scanned at an airport, a beam penetrating through Balz’s outer layers and skin to the bone structure underneath. The dealer wasn’t looking for metal in the form of weapons. No doubt he knew Balz was carrying. Nah, he was looking for a badge—and naturally, he was going to miss the real story.
The vampire shit probably wouldn’t have been relevant to him, however. Long as the cash was good.
“Nice jacket,” the dealer said. “Better’n mine.”
“I didn’t know we were competing.”
“Nice boots.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t covet your Nikes.” Balz looked to where a couple of hard-luck humans were walking away. “So are you helping me out or am I going somewhere—”
As he turned his head back, he got a gun in his face.
“Gimme your money and your coat.”
Balz let out a curse. All he needed was a little cocaine—okay, fine, an 8 ball. And instead, he was going to have to dance with this fucker.
“You do not want to do this,” he told the guy.
“Fuck you. Gimme your money and that jacket.”
“I’ll give you one chance to lower your weapon.”
As Balz drawled out the words, he was so tired of the whole world, especially as he had no faith that the reasonable advice he was offering would be taken—
The muzzle pushed into his nose, shoving it off-center, and a whiff of gunpowder cut through the bridge funk. “I’ll kill you right where you stand.”
As an undercurrent of Taco Bell registered—because clearly the guy had just had a Doritos Locos combo meal—Balz stared into the eyes that were only about eighteen inches from his own. FFS, if he hadn’t fallen asleep at the house site, he wouldn’t be here. Hell, if he hadn’t been electrocuted on the side of the Brotherhood mansion back in December, and provided the demon with the keys to his existential Airbnb, he wouldn’t be here.
Or maybe this had been his fate all along.
“I’ll pull this fucking trig—”
Annnnd that was as far as Mr. Nine Millimeter who didn’t wash his hands after eating got with the yapping. Balz entered the man’s mind, intending to accomplish with mental manipulation that which conversation was failing at: A quick reholster, a completed transaction, both going about their merry ways. That shit got sidelined quick, though.
The guy had had a busy night, and not when it came to the drug trade.
“You miserable asshole,” Balz growled. “Why the fuck you do that to her, huh? Pretending you’re the big man? Connie didn’t cheat. She’s never cheated and you know it. You frickin’ know this.”
“Wha…” Under the lip of his hoodie, the dealer’s face paled. “What you talking about?”
“You went too far tonight. You took it way too fucking far.”
The man’s fresh, brutal memories of what he had done back at the apartment he shared with a woman he regularly abused were close to the surface of his consciousness, but as Balz followed them back in time, they went deep. Years deep. And there were so many women. So many… girls.
“You sonofabitch…” Balz let his voice drift because he didn’t know enough pejoratives to cover the depravity. “You don’t need to be here. Nope. I think you’re done, pal.”
Balz took a step back and narrowed his eyes. “And you don’t deserve jail. You need to go to Hell.”
As the dealer’s arm began to move, and the muzzle of that gun started to swing around to face himself, the man tried to fight against the override of his control panel. The pungent scent of terror-sweat bloomed and his entire body shook, but there was nothing he could do to stop what was happening against his will.
It was just like all those women had been when the fucker had been beating them… and doing so much worse.
“Say goodnight, motherfucker.”
Balz willed that gun up so it was pointed at the dealer’s own temple. And then he made the guy pull the trigger.
The pop of discharge echoed and no doubt created attention, but Balz knew two things: One, people under the bridge did not get involved in other folks’ drama as a rule; and two, if there was an onlooker or an interloper who was inclined to get involved, he could handle them no problem.
The body collapsed to the ground, landing like a side of beef. And while muscles randomly twitched in the arms and legs, and the smell of urine wafted up, Balz kicked the torso over so that things were faceup. The subpar bomber jacket was partially open, and inside, he found all kinds of white-powdered goodies. As he peeled the dead—well, dying—dealer like a grape, he was jealous of the lights-out.
And prayed V would keep his promise.
Tucking the cocaine into his own jacket, Balz wanted to curse a blue streak. But he didn’t have the energy.
Especially because he was now sucked into drama that was not his own.
CHAPTER SEVEN
In the dream, Erika was back in the triplex at the Commodore, descending the curving staircase, passing by the modern artwork while an alarm went off down below. From her shoes on the fine carpeted steps to the gardenia-scented air to the up-high view over the Hudson, everything was both crystal clear and also foggy, the details as familiar as her drive to work and yet disorientating, too.
Except this isn’t a dream, she thought to herself.
At the bottom of the stairs, she paused and looked across a sitting area that belonged in a hotel lobby, everything so anonymously perfect. On the far side of the silk chairs and sofa, there was a high-ceilinged hallway off of which were many dark rooms.
That was where she had to go, where the collections of strange and somewhat disturbing objects were… where Herbert Cambourg, owner of the penthouse, collector of the Victorian surgical instruments and the bat skeletons and the books about death and black magic, had been nearly torn in half by forces that could not be explained.
Kind of made someone wonder if his explorations of the dark side… had made something reach back at him.
As soon as she entered the corridor, the other rooms disappeared from her periphery, fading away unevenly as if they were being manually erased. Dim lighting was her beacon, but she would have known her destination even in the pitch dark.
She was being called…
And then she was at the threshold of the room that held all the books. Bracing herself before she looked up, she took a deep breath—because she knew what was coming.
Erika’s exhale was sharp as she lifted her eyes: There he was, the man she could not find during the day, whose presence she could not forget at night.
“It’s you,” she said roughly. Which was what she always said to him. “And this actually happened, didn’t it. This is not a dream.”
Wincing, she put a hand to her head, but that was what she always did. And so was her wondering why she could only see him like this, when she was sleeping. Then she forgot all of that and properly focused on the man. He was not alone, but the guy standing next to him didn’t register. All she saw was the tall figure dressed in black, his eyes locked on her, his body poised and muscled. He was… incredibly beautiful, even though she knew he was dangerous.
And she didn’t need to count all those weapons on him to come to that conclusion.
“What did you do to me?” she asked. “Why can’t I remember you when I’m awake?”
His lips moved, as if he were answering her, but she couldn’t hear: Even though the alarm’s staccato beeping was loud, and her own voice was in her ears, his words couldn’t cross the short distance between them.
“You did something to my mind,” she accused him. “What was it—”
The man looked away from her, to the guy who was with him. Now both of their lips were moving, their expressions changing, becoming aggressive. As she studied the profile that haunted her, she told herself that this time would be different, this time, when she woke up, she would remember him properly and be able to do something about it.
What that was… she didn’t know.
The man looked back at her and he seemed sad in a remote kind of way. As his lips moved, she leaned in, trying to hear him—and then she realized… he wasn’t talking to her. He was still talking to his partner in crime, even though he was focused on her.
She had a moment of confusion, and then she thought, Oh, right. This was how it went.
This dream somehow inserted herself into the memory she couldn’t access when she was awake: Everything that he did or said had actually happened. Everything she did was just her trying to get through to a recording in her mind.
And now he was staring at her silently, and she knew what was coming. There was no time left before he took from her what she was chasing.
“I’m going to find you,” she vowed. “I don’t care what I have to do—”
The man frowned, and then he jerked forward and put both of his hands up to his throat, his mouth dropping open. As his face reddened and he gagged, Erika reached for him.
No, no, this wasn’t right, she thought. This was not how the dream went.
“What’s wrong—”
His retching became so violent that his head jerked back and forth, and then he bent over at his hips, throwing out one of his hands blindly.
Just as she was about to grab hold of his arm to help steady him, his eyes locked on her. “Run! Ruuuuuuuuuuun—she’s going to get you—”
His words cut off as his voice strangled into a clicking, like he was trying to speak but there was no air in his lungs or what air there was couldn’t get through a constriction. And then something… came out of him.
It was like a curl of black smoke, but it was more than that. A chill shot down Erika’s spine and she felt an instant revulsion, as if she were confronted by something festering, something… rotten.
Something evil—
* * *
Erika came awake on a scream, the horror-movie sound effect reverberating around the empty walls of her bedroom. To keep herself from waking up the other half of her townhouse—hell, the whole city—she clapped a palm over her mouth. Then she threw off the covers and sat up on her knees. Even though there was nothing in front of her, she reached forward into the thin air with her free hand.
As if she could touch the man—
A sudden sharp pain in her head made her squeeze her eyes shut, but she fought the discomfort. If she could just stay with the memory a little longer, she was so close… so close to seeing…
Seeing what? She knew she had dreamed of the triplex at the Commodore again, of going down to that first floor where the books were. She had no other details, though—other than a yearning to return to where she’d been in her mind, a striking conviction that someone who was in deadly trouble needed her help, that she had to defend and protect somebody from—
Evil.
As her head pounded to the beat of her heart, her eyes went to the glow from her open bathroom door. A persistent disorientation made her question her location, even as she got a good look at her sink and her toothbrush and the Post-it note on her mirror that read “Dental Floss” in her messy handwriting—
The sound was subtle, but in the dim silence, she caught it even over the roar in her ears. Holding her breath, she listened.
There it was again. A creak.
Outside her room on the stairs.
Snapping her hand to her bedside table, she whipped open the drawer and grabbed her nine millimeter. On her feet, she took the safety off and led with the muzzle. Her bare feet made no sound over the wall-to-wall carpeting as she toe-heel’d to the closed door. Back-flatting by the jamb, she held her breath for a second time—
Creeeeak.
No pets. No boyfriend. No family outside of the cemetery.
No keys hidden on her stoop in a flower pot, and her partner, Trey, would have called first before letting himself in.
No alarm going off, and she’d set it as soon as she’d come in like she always did.
Since joining homicide, she’d helped put all kinds of drug dealers, mobsters, and sociopathic monsters behind bars. But she’d never been afraid. She’d already lived through a home invasion where everyone was supposed to die. She’d never worried about a second.
Until… now.
Something was wrong in the townhouse. Something was… very wrong inside—
Someone, she corrected. There was no reason to get all metaphysical about this.
Still, the overhang of that disturbing dream was making her paranoid, her mind skipping around subjects that didn’t bear thinking about. Not in the real world at least.
“I am armed,” she said in a loud voice. “And I have called for backup.”
Creeeeeeaaaaaak.
Prepared to defend herself, she watched as her left hand gripped the doorknob—and abruptly she wondered what the hell she was doing. She hadn’t called anyone for backup, and there was a window by her bed that opened out to the garage roof. She should leave that way, drop down onto the lawn, and go to her neighbor across the street who was a fireman. If the person inside her townhouse had managed to get past her alarm, they were a professional hired to kill her and they were not going to want to run the risk of getting the attention of people who lived on the street.
So why would she risk confronting the intruder alone, even if she had a gun?
Because she didn’t run, that was why.
Three, two, one—
Erika yanked open the door, jumped free of the jambs, and pointed her gun directly in front of her, at the stairwell.
Which shouldn’t have been dark.
The light fixture over the staircase, which she always left on, was off for some reason, so there was nothing but a dense void in front of her—and down below, she should have been able to catch the glow from the porch fixture. It was off as well.
Nothing but shadows.
Her breath was loud. Her heart thundered.
Something in her dream had been as black as the void in front of her. Something… that had curled out of the mouth of—
Creeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaak.
“Get out of my house!” she yelled as she slapped for the light switch.
When she flipped it, nothing happened. No illumination. A brief recap of locking herself into her room and taking the window escape to the garage occurred to her. It didn’t last. As if she were compelled by a force outside of herself, she went forward, even as her legs began to tremble.
“When I find you,” she called out as she looked down into what felt like the pit of Hell, “I’m not arresting you. I’m shooting you in the chest.”
Holding her position, her eyes finally adjusted enough so that a gray glow from the slot windows on either side of her front door pulled free of all the unseeable.
Tap.
“I have a gun,” she said hoarsely. “I have… a gun.”
Tap. Tap.
The repetitive sound was soft, softer than the creaking had been; it was barely audible.
Erika swallowed through a dry throat and extended her bare foot over the first step of the stairwell. Even though she knew that her weight would be caught, she felt as though she were tilting into oblivion, initiating a free fall she wouldn’t be able to pull herself back from, plunging into a descent that would end in something far, far worse than broken bones and torn veins and…
Tap. Tap. Tap.
…a pool of her blood beneath her dead body.
The ball of her foot landed on cold wood and she wanted to grip the banister, but she needed her gun controlled as she took another step down. And another. Her hands were shaking so badly—maybe that was her whole body, especially as the hair on the back of her neck stood straight up, and everything felt icy, her skin prickling.
Tap.Tap.Tap.
She was halfway down when she recognized what the sound was. It was a finger, softly hitting on a window—
The shadow that crossed the foyer at the foot of the stairwell was quick as a blink, obvious as a scream.
The sudden rage that gripped her was the kind of thing she’d have to figure out later. The moment it hit, she gave in to the wave of aggression: Against everything rational, she pile-drove the rest of the way down, her feet thundering over the remaining steps. Leaping off the end, she landed with a thud, her gun pointed in the direction the intruder had gone, through the archway into her little living room.
Dear God, what was that smell? Like… spoiled meat.
All of a sudden, the temperature dropped so far that her breath became clouds in front of her face.
Creeeeeeeeaaaaaaaak.
Her eyes shifted to the front door, where a mirror hung by the exit so you could check your makeup as you left. The smooth glass reflected her own image back at her… as well as that of the darkened kitchen in the rear of the townhouse.
There was someone in there.
No, it was more like something. Something was there—
The shadow rushed up on her from behind, coming from out of nowhere.
As Erika was punched in the back, she screamed and turned and pulled the trigger, bullets discharging in a fat circle, shattering the mirror, hitting the door, penetrating one of the side windows, before passing through an indescribably evil entity—
* * *
Erika shouted and put her hands up to her face, shielding herself from attack as her recoil took her backwards. Set into a free fall, she had a brief, confusing impression of her work computer screen and then she was ass-over-tea-kettling it and landing faceup on a crash—
In the aisle between cubicle rows? At homicide?
For a couple of dragging breaths, she stayed where she was, wondering if she were still dreaming, if she was going to “wake up” another time. Or two. Or twelve.
