HORROR THRILLERS-A Box Set of Horror Novels (27 page)

Angelique withdrew
her wings and slumped back into the seat. What kind of man was this?
What had she gotten herself into?

He drove throughout
the day without saying another word. She sat in deep thought, the
desert air blowing in the window, ruffling her black hair back from
her face. She could not get a handle on her predicament. He was a
child molester, perhaps, a thief, a murderer, and it was possible he
was worse, but she couldn't know because she couldn't read him.
Without power over his mind, her wings were her only defense, but she
was trapped in a car without room to maneuver. He knew that, had
known it just by looking at her as she had raised the angel wings.
She was cramped. She couldn't really overpower a full-grown man in
this small space. She was his prisoner as long as she was inside the
vehicle.

When the sun set and
the night crept in across the empty landscape, he found a turn out
and pulled off the road. He shut off the engine and it ticked as it
cooled, the only sound in the long, barren night. Tick. Tick. Tick.

She reached for the
door handle to let herself out, but he reached over and grabbed her
wrist, restraining her.

“
I've been
thinking all this time,” he said.

“
You don't
want to hurt me,” she said. “You'll be sorry if you do.”

“
I'm not gonna
hurt you. Much.” Without hesitation he slapped her hard in the
face with his free hand. Her head snapped against the window ledge
and rebounded. She felt her consciousness fade in and out.

“
But you're
not getting out of his car until I say you can,” he said.

He reached under his
car seat and withdrew a coiled rope. He quickly tied her hands in
front of her, then looped the rest of the rope through the steering
wheel. “You're not going no where. Now get some sleep. I'm
bushed.”

He rolled up his
window on the cool night and leaned his head against it. He closed
his eyes. He was sleeping within a minute, his hand twined around the
rope that held her steadfast.

Angelique stared at
him until her eyes watered. Her fury was like a train gaining
momentum down a steep incline. How dare this mere human capture her
like one of his victims! Surely he knew that when she got the chance,
she would rip his head from his shoulders, she would tear his heart
asunder, she would grind him beneath her heels like a bug.

Or...

She stared at him so
hard she thought her brain was on fire. She had to calm down. She had
to be practical.

Might she find a way
to use this unusual nemesis? For the moment he had the upper hand,
but even he knew jeopardy lay in releasing her from the confines of
the car. Once she could raise her wings in full regalia, she could
dwarf him. She could lift herself from his clutches. And she could do
enough damage to make him wish he were dead.

But what if she
could make him a partner, even without controlling his impenetrable
mind? She could promise him...something. Maybe not what he wanted
most, which might be her body and her death at his hands, but profit
of another kind. Power to...

Power to indulge
those urges with others, that's what she could offer him. Power to
escape nearly any authority and any punishment for his dark deeds.

Now that she had a
plan, she turned her gaze away from the sleeping man and looked out
the dusty windshield at the night sky. Out there had been her home
for millenniums, but she wanted none of it if she could help it. She
wanted only to stare up at it like other humans. She couldn't let
this person steal her body, not when she'd almost gotten used to it,
and not when it meant she'd be banished back to the dark beyond where
she would have to start all over again. It could take her decades;
she wouldn't allow it. Now was her time. This was her world. She
wouldn't let him make her leave it.

She finally closed
her eyes and relaxed against the rim of the window. The night air
bathed her with fingers that by morning would turn icy. She didn't
care. She had been cold before on this journey. Cold, wet, hungry,
and bedraggled.

She was all right.
She would be fine. Nothing had ever stopped her and nothing ever
would, especially not a scarecrow of a man in a wrinkled suit with a
mind shut tight as a steel safe.

She slept
peacefully, her tied hands lax in her lap. She did not dream.

She woke with a
shard of sunlight in her eyes and they were moving. He had the car
started and in gear, pulling onto the highway. There were a few cars,
with drivers and passengers who didn't give them a second glance.

She saw her hands
were still tied, but now the rope end was tucked under his right
thigh, securing her to him.

“
We'll get
something to eat soon. Now tell me why we're going north.”

For the next hour
Angelique told him almost everything. About her real identity, about
Nisroc and how he had abandoned her. About her quest to find him and
how she was tracking him with supernatural ability. Then she told him
the deal she'd make with him—how they could help one another if
only he would agree.

When she finished,
they were entering a small town. He hadn't said anything. He pulled
into the parking lot in front of a cafe and shut off the engine. He
turned to her and began untying the rope.

“
I can help
you,” he said. “I'll pretend I'm your old dad and we'll
find Nisroc together.”

Now she smiled and
once again she was a charming picture of a happy child. “And
I'll give you what you want when you want it—girl, boy,
whatever. I can do that.”

“
You're sure?”

“
Positive.”

“
Then we have
a deal.” He pushed the coil of rope beneath the seat and
stepped out of the car. “Let's go grab some grub. I'm
starving.”

She followed him
into the cafe and sat across from him in a booth. Together they ate a
hearty breakfast. He ate with his mouth open and slurped his coffee,
but Angelique hadn't thought he'd have perfect manners, not a man
such as he. He paid with the stolen money while she stood docile at
his side. Back in the car she asked him why he wasn't more surprised
when he saw her wings. And why hadn't they frightened him.

“
I've
seen...things...before.”

“
What kind of
things?”

“
Spirits—of
a sort--for one.”

She nodded. “Go
on.”

“
People who
weren't exactly people.”

“
What do you
mean?” she asked.

“
People like
you, well, not like you, they weren't fallen angels with huge wings,
but they weren't altogether human either.”

“
Tell me about
them.”

For the rest of the
day on the road he told her about people who could shape shift,
turning from human to wolf or human to eagle. He told her about
people who could disappear or at least it seemed they did since they
vanished before his eyes. People who ate glass and nails without
doing any harm to themselves and people who climbed walls like cats
or slithered through pipes like snakes. Heartless humans,
conscienceless humans, humans who could feel no pain, humans who
believed in nothing.

The more he told
her, the more excited she became. She could hardly hold still while
her mind raced with possibilities. “Why haven't I ever run into
people like that? I've been around more lifetimes than you can count
and never found anyone like that at all. Are you telling me the
truth?”

He glanced over at
her with his pond green eyes. “I'm telling you straight up. You
haven't looked in the right places, that's all. You've probably
traveled in society, polite society. I've moved through the
underbelly of the world, through the gutters and alleyways, in the
abandoned and the dark places.”

“
Will you show
me those places?”

“
Sure I will.”

Then I'll believe
you, she thought. When I see it for myself.

It was as if fate
had led her to this man. He called himself Henry, but did not give
her a surname. He admitted he had done unspeakable things, but he
didn't give any details or specifics. She imagined she knew why. His
crimes involved the victimizing of children like herself and he
didn't want to spook her.

She sat
concentrating on Nisroc and trying to pick up his vibration. He was
west of them now so she'd have to instruct Henry to change direction.
After holding up a small grocery in Utah, they stopped for the night
in Salt Lake City where they took a motel room. Henry made her a
pallet on the floor and kept his distance.

He was keeping his
side of the deal.

Angelique kept her
wings hidden and thereby kept her word to him. She lay in the dark
listening to him snore in the bed and thought of Nisroc and how she'd
hurt him once she caught up to him. Although it appeared she had a
new partner who could help her as other humans had done, nothing
mortal could really replace an angel.

And then she noticed
the room was silent, no more snoring sounds, and she stiffened with
alarm. Alert to every little noise, every nuance of movement, she
felt rather than saw movement in the room from the direction of the
bed.

When Henry leaned
over her in the dark, he was no longer a thin scarecrow of a man, but
a hump-backed, lesion-covered creature from a nightmare.

“
Just thought
I'd let you know you're not the only unusual creature in the whole
world, little one” he said. His face in the dark was a black
lump of deeper darkness, his breath fetid. He reached out and pulled
the lamp string on the table lamp so that light flooded down over
them.

Angelique was
staring into the muddy green eyes of a true beast, a thing that was
no more human than was she. It was hunched and naked, its skin like
tough, mottled leather—mottled and warty with weeping, crusty
lesions. Great patches of that tough skin was mounded with scaly
mountains of such layered, multicolored skin that it made Angelique
actually cringe, drawing her shoulders in and pulling into herself.
The head was larger than what the body supported so that it hung from
the neck like a heavy pendulous bag of rocks. The being had sunken
cheeks, and a mouthful of discolored square teeth bristling from
between full dark, lesion-covered lips. The thing had no hair or
eyebrows or lashes. The legs were short, muscular and misshaped. The
shoulders were wide with bunched muscles and the arms were like tree
trunks. The hands had clubbed fingers and knotted knuckles. It had no
genitals and smooth flesh joined the torso to the legs.

Henry was not human,
definitely not human. What he really was Angelique could not say for
she'd never seen anything like him.

She sat up and
instinctively brought forth her wings. They rose into the air with a
breathy rush. Her pulse heightened and her breathing increased. She
balled her hands into fists while adrenalin coursed through her body
like scalding water.

“
Don't worry,
I'm not interested in a fight with you. We have a deal, remember? I
can't get into people's heads the way you can. I can't always make
them do what I want so I have to force them. But we make a good pair,
now, don't we?”

“
Henry, I
don't know where you've come from, but I have a feeling you're going
to tell me, aren't you?”

“
What if I
said I don't know? It's true, and I don't even know if I was born of
woman. I think, though, that I have a mission and it's not what
you've been thinking. I don't want children for what you think,
little one. I want to corrupt them. You might say that Corruption is
my real name. I breathe it into them and steal their innocence. I've
made a league of them, these soulless humans, who grow up to wreak
havoc and mayhem against the world they live in.”

She was as confused
as if he'd told her he'd dropped down from the moon.

“
What made
you?” she asked.

“
Probably
whatever made you,” he said. “Wasn't it God Himself who
did that?” His head hung over her and his eyes were glassy and
malevolent as if he dared her to lie to him.

She nodded her head
yes. His questioning gaze held her and then he leaped away.

Henry scrambled back
onto the bed, hopping like a frog, using his muscular legs to propel
himself. He sat with his knees pulled up. Saliva dripped from the
slimy teeth. He wiped his mouth with the back of a clubbed hand. She
noted that everything about him was disfigured in some way or other.
Even his toes were blackened and scaled and bent in unnatural
positions.