Heat (19 page)

There were bills on the floor by the front door. She remembered going out to the post office and getting bills. She’d dropped them on the floor. She hadn’t picked them up. Somehow, that was the most disturbing thing of all.

“Hello?” Daria called, her voice shaking.

She heard the rustle of a large body rising off the couch, as well as the lighter and perfectly-recognizable thump of Grendel jumping off a lap. The cat ran up to her, huge belly swaying, and pushed against her ankles, meowing excitedly. That only made her more uneasy; who was Grendel snuggling with down there?

“Hello?” she said again, gripping the stair-rail tightly in both hands.

Three heavy footfalls carried the unseen person across the carpet and then there was a click as he stepped off onto the hardwood. Boots? She couldn’t think of any boots that clicked, and it was too heavy a sound to be made by a lady in heels. Funny, it almost made her think of a dog.

“Lindaria Cleavon,” a man said. It was a low voice, concerned, with a strange accent. Very strange. “I do not think you are ready to be open.”

“Open?” she echoed, her floating mind momentarily flummoxed. She had a mental image of a neon sign sputtering on her forehead, like a restaurant, or a bar. The bar where she’d gotten so drunk, perhaps.

There was a pause. He said, “Eyes…open…” And in a firmer voice, “Return to the room of sleeping.”

“Awake,” Daria heard herself say. “You don’t think I’m ready to be awake. I should return to the bedroom.” Vertigo swept through her, graying her vision and freezing her blood. She had spent the whole night doing that. Correcting him. She came another two steps down towards his voice.

Why had he stopped just beyond the stairwell wall? Why hadn’t he come out where she could see him?

“Lindaria Cleavon!” Not just firm now, now he was warning her. “Return at once to the bedroom!”

She gripped the frame of the stairwell and navigated onto the last step, craning her neck around the wall to see him.

Even standing on the stair, he was taller than her. Their eyes were not quite level, and yes, his really were that stark, unblinking raptor-gold. His hair was black and way too long for a cop’s, growing well past his shoulders. He looked like he hadn’t seen a comb, bath, or bed in at least a week. Weird thing: there was a week’s worth of stubble everywhere on his jaw but on his chin. That was as smooth as her own.

Still, the overall impression she got was still ‘cop’. After a few puzzled seconds, she realized why. He was wearing some sort of vaguely-military-looking uniform. It was black with goldish trim, strangely shiny, and there were oval-shaped pips on his collar and to one side of his belt buckle. Only one thing spoiled this professional picture. He wore no shoes. He wore no socks either, which gave Daria a very good look at his three talon-tipped toes. That was what had made the clicking sound on her floors. He had talons on his toes. All three of his toes. All six, if you counted both feet.

‘I’m still drunk,’ Daria thought, studying the cop’s feet. ‘Or I’m high. I’m tripping out on acid or something. Or I’ve lost my mind.’

Could you just wake up one day and be crazy?

“Lindaria Cleavon,” the cop began, and took her firmly by the elbow. His hand had only three fingers, and some whopping big claws, and it was dry and warm and oddly thick-feeling. It also gave her the impression of phenomenal strength. “You are not ready to be awake.”

“Nobody calls me Lindaria anymore,” she said. “I’m Daria. Just Daria.”

Those brilliant, avian eyes closed and opened, like the shutter of a camera clicking on her words. “Daria,” he repeated. “You are not ready to be awake. Return at once—”

“You’re missing your show. Who are you?”

He had started to look around at the television, but at her question, he turned back and gave her a narrow stare. She got the feeling he’d already told her.

He placed one three-fingered hand over his chest—she was being way too calm about those fingers—and slowly said, “Tagen Pahnee,” and then regarded her with faint lines of concern between his inhuman eyes.

“What’s the matter with me? Did you get me high?” She felt no fear at the idea, only an indignant sort of curiosity.

The man, Tagen, frowned. Without answering, he stepped up and lifted her into his arms as easily as if she were a small child. He started up the stairs. “This is not the time for you to be awake,” he said. “You are going to make yourself sick.”

“I’ve already been sick,” she pointed out. She thought about it, and added, “I’m going to be sick again.”

Tagen stopped in the bedroom doorway and looked closely at her. “Now?”

“Oh yes.” She smiled at him. “Right now.”

Tagen executed a smart about-face and took her into the bathroom. No sooner had he set her on her feet than she was doubled over the sink again, retching sour bile.

He held her hair for her. Who
was
this guy?

Daria coughed, spat another stream of bilious froth into the sink, and staggered back a pace to sit on the side of the tub. She watched him rinse out the sink, thinking, ‘This is really going to bother me at some point very soon.’

The way his shirt/jacket/uniform moved over the bunching muscles of his broad back was hypnotic. The fabric, although black, had a luminescent quality. She didn’t think she’d ever seen anything like it, but the thought was beginning to lose its power to surprise her. She was starting to think she knew what was going on. She didn’t like it, and in fact, she really ought to be running screaming from the room if it were true, but she thought she was right all the same. She said, “You’re not from around here, are you?”

“Ha.” Just that. As dry and flat as if it were written and not laughed out of him. “No, I am not.” Tagen turned back to her at last, looking long-suffering and pained with patience. “Now will you please return to the bedroom, Lin…Daria Cleavon?”

She felt a blush of heat between her legs and looked down to watch herself wet her pants. She hadn’t done that since she was eight. God, how very vaguely embarrassing.

Tagen sighed and soon his strong hands were pulling her to her feet and placing her inside the bathtub. He began to undress her.

As her shirt and jacket came away, fear finally flared up, dim and shaky perhaps, but there. She tried to push his hands away. “Cut it out.”

“I will not harm you,” he said, implacably stripping her to the waist. And then he was tugging at her jeans.

“No!” she screamed, and exploded in a slapping windmill of motion. “Let me go! Let go of me! Where am I? Don’t touch me! Dan! Dan!” She lost everything then, falling back into the wall and shrieking helplessness and horror.

Tagen caught her before she could fall. He held her firm, but did not fight her. His strength was god-like, impervious to her haphazard blows. He had only to wait for her to exhaust herself, and finally, she slumped against him, moaning and sick.

He patted her back with a perfunctory kind of comfort and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, “Mild, my ass.”

“Please go away,” Daria whispered.

“No.” He resumed undressing her, kneeling to work her feet free of her shoes, socks, and jeans. “We are going to speak more very soon, Daria Cleavon. But this is not the time.”

Daria closed her eyes, miserably accepting this, and listened as Tagen started up the shower. Apparently, he didn’t know about the hot water knob, but Daria didn’t want to show him. The cold was fine. It was too hot, she was too sick and drunk, and the cold was just fine. She took the towel he gave her when he was done, wrapped it around her shoulders, and went back to bed.

*

The second time Daria woke, it was dark.

She lay on her side in the bed, hugging the blankets to her neck and feeling the comforting weight of Grendel against her hip. ‘It was a dream,’ she thought, testing the idea for the ring of truth. ‘I dreamed it.’

Slowly, she reached out one arm and felt at the side of the bed. Her fingers touched damp terrycloth, and she withdrew to the safety of the bed as though burned.

‘Okay, so I got drunk and dreamed it. I got drunk, and I took a shower, but I did dream it.’

Daria sat up, dislodging Grendel, who mewled at her belligerently. She slid her feet onto the floor, biting her lip with the effort at keeping silent, and stood up.

She had no idea what to do next. Should she go downstairs and make good and sure she had hallucinated the creepy cop-guy, knowing she would feel silly the whole time? She was naked. If she put clothes on first, wasn’t that a subconscious admission that she knew there would be someone downstairs?

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she told herself, trying for sternness and falling short, even in her own mind. ‘No one is downstairs. You dreamed it.’

Daria inched across the floor and silently eased her panty drawer open. She took a pair at random and pulled them on, her ears straining futilely to try and hear something beyond the closed bedroom door.

Grendel was watching her with feline fascination. When she crawled into a t-shirt (Merry Christmas! Seventh Annual Sister’s Eggnog Celebration, it said), he decided she must be going down to fix him breakfast. He hopped off the bed with a deafening thump and went running to the door, miowing madly.

“Shut up!” Daria hissed, her heart cramping with completely unreasonable terror. She grabbed the cat around his ample middle and shoved him into her closet, then leaned against the door, trying to listen past his indignant pawing.

Nothing. What did she expect?

Daria moved toward the bedroom door, her heart thumping louder with every step she took. She was giving herself the heebie-jeebies, she knew, and she was doing it all for nothing, but that was fine. She’d laugh herself sick later. Right now…right now, she just had to be sure.

It took her a whole year to turn the doorknob quietly enough to open it. She cracked the door ajar and peeked into the hallway.

Nothing. Just the hallway and the stairs.

The TV was on.
Law & Order
was playing.

Daria’s stomach tried to swallow itself, and she had to hang on to the door with both hands to stay on her feet. She couldn’t feel any part of her body. She was a ghost.

‘You’re completely freaking out over nothing,’ she insisted silently. ‘You went out this morning. You got drunk. No, you don’t remember getting drunk, but you did. You came home and got all sappy over Dan and you watched
Law & Order
the way some other flaky chick would wear his old sweater. It’s only still on now because it’s always on, that show is the fucking vampire of basic cable and it is constantly walking the earth, you know that. You got drunk, that’s the important thing. You got drunk and you watched
Law & Order
and you took a shower and you went to bed and had a scary dream. You don’t even need to go downstairs to prove it.’

Except she did.

Leaving the monster-proof safety of her room felt like stepping out of a suit of armor. She felt horribly pink and exposed. Just why she should feel pink was a bizarre sort of mystery to her, but she did. It was an awful, clammy color pink, too.

‘See? Drunk! Sober people do not have thoughts like this!’

Step by silent, trembling step, Daria made it to the head of the stairs.

Her bills were still on the floor in the foyer. The TV was still on. Everything was horribly, horribly wrong.

She found herself keenly wishing she had a weapon in her hands. She could go back into her room and get the table lamp, but that was about it, and that only thing it was likely to break if she hit someone with it was itself. If this were the movies, she’d have a halberd collection or something mounted helpfully in the hallway, or she’d be a ninja who knew how to kill a man with a hard-boiled egg. God
damn
the movies!

She began to descend, agonizing over each step, trying to remember if she had ever noticed a squeak on the stairs, trying to think of what she should do when she got down to the foyer. Should she grab a knife from the kitchen and search the rest of the house? Should she call 911 and risk exposing her case of the megrims to the public eye? Should she split and run half-naked along the eighteen mile strip of road into the nearest town and call 911 from there? She kind of had the feeling that if she did that, she’d better by-God be sure there was someone in the house first or she was going to end up back in mandatory therapy and probably a rubber room besides.

The sound on the TV suddenly muted, and Daria stopped, shock-white and shivering, her hands pressed to her mouth. That was it. That removed all doubt. There really was someone in her house.

Whoever it was got up from the couch. She heard the heavy tread of his footsteps on the carpet and then the awful click as he stepped off onto the hardwood floors. Her mind spat up an image of the feet she’d dreamed—three thick toes and black, hooked talons.

Her nerve snapped. Daria heard a long, silvery scream rip out of her and even in her frozen state of terror, she thought it was a very Hollywood scream. Her brain seemed to be watching, bemused, as the rest of her flew down the remaining stairs and crashed into the door. She yanked at the knob half a dozen times before slapping the deadbolt free. She yanked another half a dozen times before registering the door still wasn’t opening. She looked up in dumb disbelief at the slat of wood nailed over the top of the jamb.

“Lindaria Cleavon.”

She whirled, flattening herself against the door in a pointless attempt to push her molecules right through it and out the other side.
He
was there,
he
was coming for her, his horrible clawed hand stretched out before him. She shrieked again, grabbed the coat rack from the corner and threw it, coats and all, right at him.

He caught it, stumbling back with an expression of surprise that would have been funny if only it weren’t happening right in front of her, and banged the back of his knees into the coffee table. He pinwheeled, waving the coat rack for equilibrium, and Daria seized the little end table that occupied the little space between the front door and the couch and threw that at him, too. He snatched it out of the air before it hit him, but lost his balance, drop-sitting onto the coffee table with explosive results. Daria ran screaming past him.