Dark Daze (9 page)

They listened to the messages.

“We took the last call.” Ian told them the
story up until the moment they’d heard the car door, omitting the
gun. Brie wondered why, but kept her mouth closed.

Langley wrote down the last call received
from the i-com and then Dunstan looked at him. The big man set his
jaw and practically rolled his eyes at his partner. Brie didn’t
need her intuition to know they weren’t going to help.

“We’ll check it out, but it’s obviously a
prank call. A neighbor must have seen the bear near your house and
called you to scare you. Some people have a sick sense of
humor.”

“But Officer Langley—” Bears couldn’t do what
had been done to Ian’s door.

“Listen Miss, maybe you two should stay
somewhere else tonight—a motel, or a friend’s house maybe.”

“I—” Ian stepped forward.

“Give the i-com company a call. They can help
you stop the prank calls. And animal control will tell you what you
can do about the bear.”

The cops turned and walked back to the car,
ignoring Ian’s shaking head.

Brie turned to Ian. “Why didn’t you tell the
cops about the gun?”

“I didn’t want them to give me a hard time
about it. They left so fast. They obviously think this is a joke,
but something is happening here.” He stared at the julienned door
while he spoke. “And maybe you should go too. I’d understand if you
feel safer away from me and my strange i-com wielding bears.”

She smiled, but for a moment, she couldn’t
answer. What
was
she doing here? She liked Ian, but she
should run. At least her flips were safe, barring the occasional
fall. Whatever destroyed the door was far more real, and dangerous.
So why wasn’t she running?

Instinct told her he was a good man, and she
had shared her truth with him. She’d always wanted to share her
past with a man. Perhaps the closeness, which came from sharing so
much, skewed her intuition, as she’d always feared. Then she
realized the truth. She wouldn’t leave, even if he weren’t in the
equation. This was her chance to change things. Her flips left her
helpless, and this might be her only chance to be powerful. It
might be her opportunity to do something real.

“What do we do now?” She stepped toward him,
rubbing a palm over his upper arm, and craning her neck to gaze
deep into his troubled eyes. “We can go to my apartment, but it
won’t help us with whatever this is. I’m not buying the bear
thing.”

“No, we have to go see my mom. She’s been
calling, and it might be because she has some information. Maybe
she painted something helpful.”

She nodded and followed him into the house.
He threw some clothes into a bag and grabbed the gun, setting it on
top.

“She lives in the mountains of Wrightwood, so
bring a coat because they get lots of snow.” Ian picked up his
i-com from where the officer left it. “Let’s go.”

Brie grabbed her purse and followed him to
the car, a mix of fright, shock, and wonder gave the evening a
surreal quality. Buster plodded along next to her, panting as
though all were right with the world now.

Pain stabbed through her head. Even as she
sat up in the bed Ian had shown her to last night, her reality
shifted. No longer her mind, nor her will…Becoming—

Andrea woke early Saturday morning, humming
as she went through her morning ritual. She rushed to get back to
Dean and Bowser. They just left to his mother’s house, he and
Brittany. What a cute relationship. This was so much better than
Kingsley’s usual love subplots.

The author’s protagonists were always good
people. Despite the trouble they went through, they always seemed
clever and sure of themselves. Though there was never a guarantee
they would live in a Kingsley novel, they usually died saving
someone else or doing something heroic, which made the end all the
more heart-rending. She sighed, opened the cover, and flipped to
chapter three. Drawing her feet beneath her, she twisted a strand
of hair around her finger.

“
After a nerve-wracking drive along dark
winding mountain roads, Dean had finally gotten to his mother’s
house and settled into a long, sleepless night, wishing he weren’t
separated from Brittany by bedroom walls. Now morning had rolled
around, Dean clambered out of bed, tossing off the covers, which
he’d used more as a wrestling partner than anything else. However,
in the brief period before morning when he’d slept, he knew he’d
had a pleasant dream. All he could recall was chocolate brown eyes,
and a dark hair falling over them. There had been something calming
in those soft eyes.

“
He surveyed his mother’s guest room for
Bowser, who lay in a heap near the heating vent. ‘Looks like you
had a restful evening. No concerns about the creature?’ Bowser gave
a loud yawn, then stretched.

“
It must have been a bear. What else could
it have been? And what about the calls? Just a prank or was it
something more? He showered, dressed, and headed to the kitchen
where a large stack of freshly made waffles waited for
him.”

Brain throbbing, Brie came back to the small
room. “What is going on here?” She grabbed her head.

She tossed her covers off and, wearing the
pajamas Ian’s mother, Delia had given her, she followed the smell
of baking waffles to the kitchen.

“Eat up, boy-o. You have to preserve your
strength, especially with all the renegade bears out there,” Delia
said.

Even after their late night arrival, the
wild-haired woman’s smile was as bright and cheerful as her
kitchen. The yellow and white walls made the morning seem far more
chipper than it had been an instant before. Delia used a spatula to
shove several waffles onto her son’s plate.

“Stop teasing me. It may be funny to you, but
you should see my door.” He grimaced. “Besides, my appetite turned
and drove the other direction last night. Sorry again for showing
up so late.”

Brie stepped toward the table, wondering how
to say what she must.

“Good morning.” He held out a hand toward
her. “Come in.”

“Sit down, have a waffle, and we’ll chat a
bit. We didn’t get much of a chance last night.” Delia gave Brie a
patient smile. “I want to get to know Ian’s new girlfriend
better.”

Brie looked at Ian, then back to the woman
who adjusted her thin glasses, and then mumbled to herself, “Yeah,
I guess I would be now, wouldn’t I?”

“I’m so glad you’re here, dear.” Thin arms
went wide, and before Brie knew it, she was locked in Delia’s
embrace.

She smelled of lavender and cookies. Just
what a mother should smell like.

Brie hadn’t realized for a long time how much
she missed her mom. A moment in Delia’s arms made her remember what
having her mother was like. Her heart melted, and she smiled.

She spent the next twenty minutes chatting
about her life and trying to choke down the waffles in spite of her
negative appetite. Ian rolled his eyes every time his mother snuck
waffle bits to Buster. Brie had to tell him about what she’d seen
in her dream, but how could she do it in front of his mother? Delia
had a gift too. Did that mean she would understand?

“I…” Brie hesitated when the attention of the
room was on her. What exactly could she say about her flip. She
didn’t really understand it. She glanced at Delia. “What are you
doing today?”

“I’ve got to go to the supply store and pick
up more tubes of black and red. I feel I’ll need them.”

Ian nodded. “Good, we’ll go down to the art
supply store. I’ll buy the paint, and you can paint for me.”

Delia met Ian’s gaze, but didn’t speak, and
Brie wondered exactly what Ian had told her about the previous
night.

<><><>

Moments later, they piled into Ian’s truck,
heading toward the Arterium. Ian had never been happier to pull
into the parking lot of an art store in his life. Soon they would
have some answers.

They left Buster in the front seat and went
into the Arterium, which looked like Venice Beach had come for an
extended visit to the interior of the quaint store.

A mural covered the ceiling—a poor rendition
of an artist’s hand holding a dripping paintbrush over a canvas.
Armature art, given to the store by loyal customers or painted by
the staff, decorated the walls. Supplies of every variety filled
the shelves throughout the store. His mother moved to an aisle full
of paints, holding one of the small baskets the employees stacked
near the end caps. Brie waited, fidgeting from foot to foot.

He knew exactly why. Watching his mother shop
for oil paints was like watching a fisherman trying to find the
perfect bait to catch a prize fish. She stared at the tube, reading
every word on it. Then she opened the cap and smelled the paint as
intently as a wine connoisseur would smell the cork of a vintage
wine bottle. Next, she put a small amount on her fingertip and
smeared it around. Finally she wiped her finger on a piece of
canvas.

Ian leaned into Brie. “When I turned
fourteen, I asked her why she did that,” he angled his chin towards
his mother. “She said ‘you should insist upon perfection in
everything that truly matters to you, Ian. Otherwise you’re just
average.’ Good advice, I guess.”

Brie nodded and shifted again.

Ian hated to see her nervous, so he crossed
to the next aisle. He picked through the books, showing paintings
to her to ease her tension. A book filled with Monet’s water
lilies, another holding Botticelli’s ladies, and a third containing
Titian’s beauties made a neat pile in moments. He flipped to a
self-portrait of Picasso sans ear.

Bright color caught Ian’s eye. A man in a
clown costume drifted down the long aisle perpendicular to theirs.
When Ian turned from the art book, he caught a glimpse of the man’s
face before it went behind the high shelf. The make-up, at least he
thought it was the make-up, made the painted face appear to have
giant yellow teeth covering half of its large head. The red paint
around the lips gave a snarling effect to the clown’s visage.

Ian shook his head. His imagination must be
running away with him.

The clown passed by again on the other side.
The make-up definitely made a fierce, growling sneer, but the eyes
were what bothered him. The eyes seemed to be hollow black holes
with a thin line of red at the edges of where the whites should
have been. What kind of children’s party would call for such a
hideous mask?

Ian’s heart began an irregular pattern, and
the hair rose on his arms.

He glanced around, listening to a tube of
paint drop back onto a stack. His mother must have found one she
hadn’t liked for some inexplicable reason. Brie stood by him,
seeming oblivious to the strange costume.

Ian took a deep breath to calm himself.
Instead, his palms became clammy and then damp. Several large
containers of paint stood on the top shelf beyond the row of books
where he stood, shaking and sweaty. A bottle with the words written
in blood red on the label drew his eye. Swallowing hard, he studied
it for a moment. A large clawed hand moved up to close around the
container. The hand appeared to be skeletal with a grayish-green
hue. Like the old monster movies he’d seen as a boy. The claws
extending out from the fingertips—no, that was wrong—the claws the
fingers tapered into, looked razor sharp.

The book fell from Ian’s shaking hands and
landed on the floor with a loud thump. He stared at the claw as it
closed around the bottle and drew it off the shelf. His own hand
moved involuntarily to the spot where his gun waited, concealed
between his jeans and his back.

“Ian?” Brie’s voice echoed in some dim place
far away.

His mother!

The thought shot through his mind like a
bullet. His mother stood right next to the monster thing.

Time to end this. He had to catch the
unsuspecting beast off guard and kill it, before it could kill him
or anyone else. Ian flew around the corner. He slipped, tripping on
his neat pile of books. Groping at the shelves, he tried to stay on
his feet, but lost the grip on the gun in his waistband. He
skidded, grabbing blindly at the clown, and fell in a mass of books
and tumbling paint bottles.

Ian jerked back his fist, ready to pound the
thing before it could claw him to death.

“Wait, please! I have money in my wallet!”
Still clutching the bottle of blood red face paint, the small man
with his big cherry wig and bulbous nose began to sob.

Ian froze. In his blind panic, he hadn’t
noticed the man beneath him was just that: a man. The paint
generously circling his lips looked like an ordinary clown’s smile,
aside from the gush of tears, which washed rivers of scarlet down
his cheeks and chin. His gentle blue eyes didn’t even hint at the
blackness Ian had seen. They looked…kind. Red wig quivering, he
yanked his wallet out and held it open to Ian, offering his money
in exchange for his safety.