Evil Dark (40 page)

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Authors: Justin Gustainis

Tags: #Justin Gustainis, #paranormal, #Stan Markowski, #crime, #Occult Investigations Unit, #urban fantasy

BOOK: Evil Dark
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  "Yeah, sorry about that," I said. "Until about three minutes ago, I thought you were one of the bad guys."
  I found out later that the goblin words for "bitch" and "faggot" – neither of which is a nice thing to call somebody – sound very similar. Ivan the ogre had mistranslated, so whenever Wilson had referred to "our Bureau colleague", I'd assumed he meant Thorwald
  "The Bureau thought the same thing about Greer, and has for a while now," she said. "That's why they assigned me as his partner – to keep an eye on him, and wait for him to slip up – which he finally did, a few minutes ago."
  I could hear sirens now.
  "I think Greer was suspicious of me, too, after a while," Thorwald said. "I wanted to let you know that he shouldn't be trusted with sensitive information, but if I had a private conversation with you, or asked you out to lunch alone, he'd know something was up."
  "Why didn't you just call me?" I said.
  "I don't trust the phones," she said. "The Church is believed to have some people at NSA, the National Security Agency. They can pull any conversation they want out of the air and listen to it."
  "Well," I said, "being paranoid doesn't mean that they're not really out to get you."
  "For sure," she said. "That's why I invited you to my room that morning. It was the only plausible excuse to be alone with you that Greer would accept."
  The sirens were closer. The police cars and ambulance would be here any minute now.
  "Wait a second," I said. "That's why you invited me to your room – to warn me about Greer? Not for the 'hard fucking' you were talking about?"
  "Well," Thorwald said with a toss of her head, "the two weren't mutually exclusive, I suppose."
  "Is that what you really had in mind – both a warning about Greer
and
sex?"
  The smile she gave me would have made Mona Lisa envious. "I guess we'll never know, will we?"
 
You know how sometimes you're asleep, and you dream that you've just woken up? That happens to me, sometimes.
  I opened my eyes and slowly came awake – or thought I did. The room around me was unfamiliar, and the pale light coming in through the window had that translucent quality you sometimes find in dreams. Awake or asleep, I felt
good
– I knew that. In fact, I couldn't stop my face from growing a smile so wide I could've been running for public office.
  From my left, a woman's voice said, "That's the kind of grin I associate with the Cheshire Cat – the morning after he got his rocks off, well and truly."
  Lacey Brennan propped herself up on one elbow and looked down at me, her blonde hair disarrayed in what my partner Karl, who is known to be crude, would call a "freshly fucked look".
  "Where am I?" I asked.
  "My place. It's your first visit – who knows, maybe it won't be your last."
  "If this is a dream, I've had something like it before," I said. "But it never seemed this real."
  "Really?" Lacey gave me a wicked grin, all traces of the monster gone from her blue eyes. "You used to dream about fucking me, Stan?"
  I nodded. "Oh, yeah. Often. But I never had the nerve to try it in real life."
  "Until last night, you mean."
  "Is that what I did last night? Put the moves on you – and it worked?"
  "Don't you remember? You must've had more champagne than I thought. Although, come to think of it, I had quite a bit myself."
  "Maybe that's what accounts for my success. We were drinking champagne, huh? Must've been celebrating something."
  "'Course we were," Lacey said. "This nasty bastard of a case is finally over, and we all came out of it more or less intact. So we celebrated – the three of us. With champagne and… other things."
  "
Three
? Three of us?"
  "Sure – you, me, and Linda – who really isn't such a bad person, once you get to know her."
  "
Linda
? Who's Linda?"
  "Linda
Thorwald
, dummy. Remember her – Federal agent, eyes bluer than mine, black hair, nice tits?"
  I closed my eyes, but when I opened them, Lacey was still there. "You, me, and Thorwald… celebrating? Together?"
  Lacey nodded. "I don't normally do things like that, but it
was
a special occasion. And, besides – you know what they say."
  "Uh, no, Lace – what do they say?"
  "That every straight woman is just two drinks away from bisexuality. And I
know
I had more than two."
  "OK, now I'm
positive
I'm dreaming," I said. "But the only complaint I have is, sooner or later, I'm gonna wake up."
  Lacey nodded sympathetically. "Probably with a bad hangover, too. Poor baby."
  I felt weight shift on the mattress to my right. The sheet moved a bit, and then Linda Thorwald was looking down at me from the other side. Her hair was pretty mussy, too.
  More of the freshly fucked look, I thought. My God, this is a
great
dream.
  The grin that Thorwald was giving me matched Lacey's for wickedness, and maybe even surpassed it.
  "Still think you're dreaming, Stan?" she said. Her voice had a huskiness that I'd never heard in it before. She leaned forward slowly, and Lacey did the same. Their noses touched, and then they were kissing, less than a foot from my face. The kiss went on for a little while.
  Then Thorwald took hold of the sheet that was covering us and slowly pulled it down. All the way down.
  "In that case," she said, "I think this dream of yours is about to get a whole
lot
better."
 
 
Continue the journey with
Known Devil
by Justin Gustainis
Coming soon from Angry Robot
 
 
Acknowledgments
 
 
Jurgen Kleist, Professor of German at Plattsburgh State University, helped me make Victor Castle briefly bilingual.
  John Carroll, my oldest friend, continued to provide valuable information about the Wyoming Valley whenever my memory and the Internet failed me.
  Jeanne Cavelos, director of the Odyssey Writing Workshop and sole proprietor of Jeanne Cavelos Editorial Services, does plotting better than anyone I know. She was kind enough to share her facility with me, to the book's great benefit.
  My agent, Miriam Kriss at the Irene Goodman Agency, negotiated a nice three-book deal for Stan Markowski, of which this volume is the second. Miriam rocks.
  Linda Kingston did a great job of morale maintenance, especially during the latter stages of writing this book.
  Terry Bear served in his usual roles as confidant and menu planner. He excels at both.
ANGRY ROBOT
 
A member of the Osprey Group
 
Lace Market House,
54-56 High Pavement,
Nottingham,
NG1 1HW, UK
 
I'm Batman…
 
An Angry Robot paperback original 2012 
1
 
Copyright © Justin Gustainis 2012
 
Justin Gustainis asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
 
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
 
ISBN: 978-0-85766-135-7 
EBook ISBN: 978-0-85766-137-1
 
Cover Artist: Timothy Lantz. 
Set in Meridien by THL Design.
 
Printed in the UK by CPI Mackays, Chatham, ME5 8TD.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
 
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
 
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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