HORROR THRILLERS-A Box Set of Horror Novels (33 page)

He headed toward the
wharves and the water, feeling wholly well now, not a stitch of pain
coming from the stabbing. Though she'd tried to slow him down, if not
outright kill him with her mad assassin, she hadn't been able to do
more than inconvenience him.

He laughed, throwing
his head back, and smiling at the passersby who looked up startled at
the tall, blond laughing man.

Jody pushed Kurt out
the closet door before him. “Go home,” he said,
breathlessly. “I have to leave.”

“
No...I...but...I...”

Jody hadn't time for
this little boy. He'd heard Nick thumping down the stairs in a hurry,
passing the cleaning closet, his footsteps echoing down the stairs to
the lobby.

“
Go!”
Jody said furiously, pushing the child toward the stairs leading up
to the boy's room.

Then he turned,
racing time, and sprinted down the other way toward the lobby. He had
to keep Nick in sight, had to stick with him, it was imperative he do
so though he didn't know why and realized more than usual that he was
but a small man, a little man, a midget in fact, and his help was not
going to be of the utmost usefulness.

“
To hell with
that,” he muttered, not sparing the clerk a glance as he hit
the door, his pack of clothes over his shoulder.

What he didn't know
was that Kurt followed. He was several steps behind, but he too
skittered into the linoleum-lined lobby on the run, barely keeping
his balance, flailing his arms to stay upright.

The clerk,
recognizing him, and having noticed the big man and the little man
racing through first, yelled, “Hey, boy, where you going?”

“
Down to the
water! Down, down, down to the water!” the child yelled back
just as he slipped out the front door.

On the street Nick
obliviously marched toward the wharves and when he neared them, he
veered off to follow the shoreline. In the distance he saw the strait
where a year later construction on the Golden Gate Bridge would
begin. For now there was still a ferry, but he couldn't see it
crossing in the mists rising off the blue waters.

He reached a
precipitous incline and strolled along it, the wind off the water
ruffling his hair. He reached up to brush back a lock from his eyes
and squinted out at the rolling waters. He was moving farther and
farther from the city. There was nothing along this bank, but one
overturned fishing boat along the rocky shore. No one walked here and
at his back he could feel the city retreating.

What he did not
feel, his mind and heart full of Angelique and how he might deal with
her, was the scrambling along of two small people, a man and a boy.
Each one had him in their sights, keeping pace behind and above him
on a higher ridge of earth.

At one spot ahead
Nick saw a trail led down to the water and he took it, sliding in the
rocky soil, catching himself with his hands behind him, carefully
picking his way.

Here the wind was
up, pushing at him, flattening his white long-sleeved shirt against
his chest. His hair was now pushed back from his forehead and lay
close to his scalp.

Nick breathed in the
scents of water and fish bellied-up on the short beach. The wind blew
from the north and he was heading into it, filling his lungs and
laughing again now, laughing at the glory of being alive. The sun was
directly overhead, a white orb. Whitecaps spewed across the water's
surface, pinpoints and splinters of light reflected off the water,
and in the distance was the bay. It was a spectacular day and he
wasn't wrong that this day was the one she would find him in. It
might be his last day, the last time he would ever feel the sun warm
on his shoulders, the last time to suck the clean air into his lungs,
the last day to appreciate the eddy and whirl of the water as it made
its way to sea.

He raised his arms
and let his wings come forth. His shirt opened and slipped from his
body leaving him naked from the waist up, the muscles of his chest
rippling with the effort to life the wings. He felt like a titan of
old, a great angel the way he had once been before his Creator
stopped loving him. He felt the majesty of his being mixed with the
perfect body of a human man. Sinew and muscle, blood and bones, and
wings twelve feet tall with a spread of thirty feet. He might die
here by the inlet sea, at the base of the rolling mountains, outside
the busy avenues of a bustling city, but if he did then it was all
worth it.

“
Hurry,”
Angelique said. “We're almost there.”

They had left before
daybreak and now the sun stood overhead like a giant's white eye.
They were nearly to San Francisco and she knew that Nisroc waited. He
had not fled. He had given up his quest to outrun her. He waited for
the justice she meant to mete out to him. Could she forgive him in
the end and take him back?

But how would she
ever trust him again?

And if he was
changed, changed so radically that being with her was anathema to his
new conscience, then she would necessarily have to send him back.
Take his beautiful body from him and send him back skittering like a
rat into the dark. Though he was larger in stature than she, he was
no match to her real power.

“
Hold onto
your panties, I'm going fast as I can.” Henry mopped his face
with a handkerchief, driving one-handed. He had the petal to the
metal and what did she expect from this old crate anyway? Ahead he
could see the meandering hills of the city and below it the dark blue
highway of water that spilled out into the bay.

“
Oh my God.”
Jody frowned and balled his fists. The boy just stood there looking
shame-faced.

“
I your
friend,” Kurt said in a small voice.

Jody didn't know
whether to hug the boy or knock him upside the head he was so
distraught. “I told you to go home, go to your room! What about
your parents? They're going to miss you.”

“
No, they
fightin' and screamin'. They no miss me.”

Jody had indeed
heard a couple up the stairs making enough racket to wake the dead.
He heard yelling and things thumping against a wall and on the floor.
Now Jody did grab the child and hug him fiercely to him. He only
stood an inch taller than the child and they, together, threw such a
small shadow on the rough ground.

“
I don't know
what I'm going to do with you.”

Kurt held his
silence, his face hidden in the crook of Jody's shoulder.

A strange idea came
into Jody's head, so strange in fact that he had to step back and
shake himself to get rid of it. He had thought for a second how maybe
he and Nick, once this was over with Angelique, should take the child
with them. On a ship. Overseas to a foreign land. Where there was no
screaming or crying or fighting or people calling you “bad
dumb.” It seemed like such a good idea, such a right and just
idea.

“
Well,
cranberry cobbler and cold beer, if you aren't the stubborn one,”
Jody said, reaching out to ruffle the boy's badly cut hair.

Kurt grinned,
showing a couple of missing baby teeth. He didn't look better when he
smiled, but he didn't look worse either.

Jody told him to
squat down, for pete's sake, and they both hunkered down to climb to
the ridge so they could look over. Once at the top, his head peeking
above the rim, Jody drew in his breath and held it. Beside him the
boy groaned softly in fear. “I want my flashlight,” he
whispered.

There below them
stood Nick, his wings spread, the whole of his back black and shiny
with feathers that spun out from the center to the tips, gleaming
like leather polished black and shining in sunlight. As the wind
ruffled the very edges of the feathers, tiny sparks of light twinkled
like stars lost in the cosmos.

“
I don't care
who you are, that is one amazing, freaking sight,” Jody
whispered. “Jesus God,” he added. Something inside him
seemed to break. He had never seen such a thing, never even imagined
it. It was one thing to travel with a man who claimed he was an angel
and another thing entirely to see it for yourself. He was an angel,
true enough. And the truth of it was so staggering that the reality
Jody believed he understood became nothing more than a jumbled puzzle
lying in pieces scattered around a table top. He didn't know if he
could ever fit those pieces together again because how could you
re-imagine a world where there were creatures, real creatures living
in the here and now, as beautiful and as glorious as this?

Angelique climbed
from the car and left the door hanging open like a hand pointing
away. Henry unfolded from his driver's seat and stood. He looked
where the girl was looking, but he couldn't see anything but rooftops
parading down a mountainside and beyond them the blue water. “What?”

She ignored him and
started off. He followed behind. She stopped abruptly and turned
around on her heels. “You don't need to come.”

He heard it as an
order, but he still smiled. “I have never seen an angel
destroyed. Try to keep me back.”

For just an instant
he shimmered and glimmered in the light and Angelique saw him as two
beings, one the tall, scrawny Henry and then the squat,
leather-skinned monster with the green swampy eyes. Neither of them
looked amenable to command.

She shrugged as if
to say Fine, I leave it to you. And strode on.

It looked farther
than it really was, down through the neighborhoods, women hanging out
the wash, children skipping rope on the sidewalks, a few cars
rumbling past. Cats dozed in the sun and dogs lay beneath the
porches. San Francisco smelled like a young boxer, full of sweat and
grit, willing to go all the rounds. Within an hour they had passed
among the cobble-stone ways and warmed tarmac streets; they had
leaned back into themselves as they hurried down the steep inclines
that led, inevitably, to the shining, beckoning mouth of the sea.

In an hour they were
through the city and beyond it, sounds of commerce and life fading
behind them like a calliope heard from a distant hillside. Wind came
up blowing against them so that even as they moved downhill, the wind
tried to push them back.

Henry felt his
cheeks flatten and his hair slick back over his scalp. His coat
flapped around him like wash on a line in a high gust and he found
himself squinting at the sun that now had rolled over like a liquid
boulder of fire toward the west.

Nothing deterred
Angelique, nothing slowed her down. She was aimed as straight as a
well-shot arrow, moving ever closer to the far waters. “He's
there,” she was chanting softly to herself. “He's there,
he's there.”

“
What is that
scary thing?” Kurt asked. He was clutching Jody's arm so tight
it hurt him.

Jody pried the boy's
fingers loose and then patted his hand the way he might pat a
trembling little puppy. “It's not scary. That's Nick, my
friend.”

“
I your
friend.”

“
And I yours,”
Jody said, pulling the boy over close to him as they stared down over
the ridge at the marvel who stood waiting, wings spread, on the lower
shore. “And so is Nick down there.” He hesitated but a
little. “I his friend.”

A crippling stomach
pain took hold of Jody and he said, “Whoa.” He reached
down to massage his gut. Not now, he thought, don't give me the willy
nilly runs now.”

“
You're sick,”
Kurt said, looking concerned.

“
Not much.”
Jody had to lower his chin to his chest to hide his eyes. He massaged
his belly and cursed his frail, little body. What had he eaten? What
had he not? The night before he'd left the closet for only a little
while, hunger driving him, and made his way to the speakeasy where
they had once worked. He ordered a steak that turned out to be
stringy and tough and he drank two bottles of beer as a chaser. God
almighty, he was going to have to watch it from now on, this was
terrible.

A new cramp struck
and he doubled over where he lay, pursing his lips to hold back any
sound. He glanced up at the boy and saw his fear. Anything could set
off that child's Fear Thermometer. Right now it looked as if it were
reading into the red zone.

“
Hey, I'm all
right, it's nothing, a little cramp. Gimme a minute.”

Kurt sat beside him
patting him on the back as if he were a baby needing burping. Finally
the pain subsided enough to allow Jody to sit up. He still had both
hands on his stomach, holding on, hoping against hope he wouldn't
have to run away from here to find an outhouse in someone's back yard
or a bathroom in an establishment. It was too far back anyway, he'd
never make it. The thought of soiling himself suffused his cheeks
with red moons. He would not do it. He would control this spasm of
his bowels and get over it, get over it, already, he told himself.