Fallen Angels 01 - Covet (18 page)

Vin shook his head. “Drive safe.”

“I will.”

The truck took off and Vin went up the graduated steps to the Commodore's lobby entrance. With the swipe of a pass card, he opened one of the doors and walked into the marble lobby. Over at the sign-in desk, the older, overnight security guard glanced up, caught a look at Vin's puss, and dropped the pen he was holding.

Guess the swelling was kicking in. Which would explain why one of Vin's eyes was having trouble blinking.

“Mr. diPietro...are you—”

“Hope you have a quiet night,” Vin said as he strode to the elevator doors. “Thank...you.”

On the way up the building, Vin got a good gander at what the security guard had gone penless over. In the darkened mirrors of the elevator, he stared at his busted nose and the scratch on his cheek and the beginnings of the shiner he was going to have in the morning—

All at once, his face started to pound with the beat of his heart. Which made him wonder if he hadn't seen his reflection whether it would have stayed quiet.

Up on the twenty-eighth floor, he stepped out into the hall and got his key ready. While he worked the lock, he had the sense that his life had taken a beating tonight along with that college kid. Everything felt off. Dislocated.

He hoped it wasn't the start of a trend.

Vin opened his door, took a listen, and got hit with a whole lot of exhaustion. There was no security alarm to deactivate, and from the second floor, he could hear the television mumbling: She was home.

Waiting for him.

Shutting himself in, he turned the lock, engaged the alarm, and eased back against the wall. When he could stand it, he looked up the marble staircase and watched the blue flicker of whatever show was on.

It sounded like an old movie, some kind of Ginger Rogers-Fred Astaire flying-hoof special. Guess he had to go up and face the music, so to speak.

As forties-era standards rippled out of the bedroom, he pictured Devina propped up on the Frette pillowcases, wearing one of her wispy chiffon nightgowns. When he walked in, she would be shocked at his face and would try to nurse him—and she'd want to apologize for bailing from the club in the same way she'd made up for being unreachable the night before.

Or she would try to. He didn't feel like having sex tonight.

At least...not with her.

“Shit,” he muttered.

Damn him to hell, but he wanted to drive right back to that club, but not to try to rehab Marie-Terese's opinion of him. He wanted to pull out five hundred dollars and buy some time with her. He wanted to kiss her and pull her against his body and run his hands up the insides of her thighs. He wanted his tongue in her mouth and his chest against her breasts and he wanted her gasping and wet. He wanted her to let him take her.

The fantasy got him instantly hard—but it didn't last, neither the hot images nor the erection.

What killed the fantasy was the memory of her in that fleece. She'd been so small. So...fragile. Not an object to be bought, but a woman in a brutal business, leveraging her body for cash.

No, he didn't want to be with her like that.

As the raw mechanics of the way she earned her money tackled him, Vin thought, of course she was in danger. Look at what had happened tonight. Men couldn't be trusted when their cocks were involved, and he himself was guilty of that kind of penile thinking. Just now, for example.

Desperate for a drink, Vin headed for the bar in the living room.

Devina had turned the lights off, but the electric fireplace was on and the flames flickered around the walls, turning them liquid and making the shadows move like they were tracking his stride through the room.

With his fucked-up punching hand, he poured himself a bourbon, and as he drank it, his lip hurt on one side.

Looking around, he measured everything he had bought with money he'd made, and in the shifting illumination it seemed to melt around him, the wallpaper dripping off in oozing sheets, the shelves sagging, the books and the paintings morphing into Dali-esque figments of their normal selves.

Amidst the distortion, his eyes went to the ceiling and he imagined Devina up above him.

She was just one more thing he'd purchased, wasn't she: He paid for her with clothes and travel and jewelry and spending money.

And he'd bought that diamond yesterday not because wanted her to have the stone as a token of love—it was just one more part of an ongoing transaction.

The fact was, he'd never told Devina he loved her...not because he was emotionally repressed, but because he didn't feel that way about her.

Vin shook his head until his brain sloshed around enough so that the room returned to normal. Tossing back the rest of the bourbon, he performed a refill. Which he drank. 'Nother refill. 'Nother polish-off.

More of the pouring.

He had no idea how long he stood in front of the bar drinking on his feet, but he was able to measure the way the level in the bottle dropped. And after four inches, he decided to just finish what was in the thing, and took the Woodford Reserve with him over to the couch that faced the view.

Staring out over the city, he got really fucking drunk. Saturated.

Plowed. Messed the fuck up until he couldn't feel his legs or his arms and he had to let his head fall back against the pillow because he couldn't hold it up anymore.

Sometime later, Devina appeared naked behind him, her reflection in the glass looming in the archway of the living room.

Through the haze of his numbed-out state, he realized that there was something wrong about her... about the way she moved, about the way she smelled.

He tried to lift his head to see more clearly, but it was as if the damn thing were Velcroed to the back of the sofa, and though he strained until his breath jammed in his throat, he got nowhere.

As the room degraded once more, everything looking like a bad acid trip, he was powerless. Frozen. Both alive and dead.

Devina didn't stay behind him.

She moved around the couch, and his eyes stretched wide as she came in front of him. Her body was decayed, her hands twisted into claws, her face nothing but a skull with strips of gray flesh hanging from the cheeks and chin. Trapped inside his paralyzed body, he struggled to get away, but there was nothing he could do as she approached.

“You made the bargain, Vin,” she said in a dark voice. “You got what you wanted and a deal is a deal. You can't go back on it.”

He tried to shake his head, tried to speak. He didn't want her anymore.

Not in his house, not in his life. Something had changed when he'd seen Marie-Terese, or maybe it was Jim Heron—although why that guy would matter he hadn't a clue. But whatever the cause, he knew he didn't want Devina.

Not in her beautiful form and certainly not in this one.

“Yes, you do, Vin.” Her horrible voice wasn't just in his ears; it vibrated through his body. “You asked me to come to you and I gave you what you wanted and more. You made a bargain and you've taken everything I brought into your life, you've eaten it, drank it, fucked it

— I'm responsible for it all and you owe me.”

Up close, she didn't have eyes, just raw sockets that were black holes.

And yet she saw him. Just as Jim had said, she
saw
right into him.

“You have what you wanted, including me. And there is a price and a payment for everything. My price...is you and me together forever.”

Devina mounted him, putting a skeletal knee on each side of his thighs, planting her horrible, shredded palms on his shoulders. The stench of her rotten flesh clawed into his sinuses, and the hard edges of her bones cut into him. Ugly hands went for his fly and he shrank back inside his skin.

No...no, he didn't want this. He didn't want her.

As Vin struggled to open his mouth and couldn't budge his jaw, she smiled, her waxy lips parting from teeth anchored by black gums.

“You're mine, Vin. And I always take what is mine.”

Devina sprang his cock, which was hard with terror, and stood it up between her parted legs. He didn't want this. He didn't want her. No...

“Too late, Vincent. It's time for me to claim you, not just in this world but the next.” With that, she took him, her decomposing body encompassing his, fisting his flesh in a cold, scratching grip.

The only thing that moved on him, apart from her, was his tears. They ran down his cheeks and onto his throat, getting absorbed by the collar of his shirt. Caged under her, taken against his will, he tried to scream, tried to get a—

“Vin! Vin—wake up!”

His eyes flashed open. Devina was right in front of him, her beautiful face drawn in panicked lines, her elegant hands reaching out to him.

“No!” he hollered. Yanking her out of the way, he lunged to his feet and overshot his mark, falling face-first into the carpet, landing as his glass did with a hard bounce.

“Vin...?”

He jacked himself onto his back and brought his hands up to fight her off—

Except she wasn't coming after him anymore. Devina was sprawled on the couch where he had been, her glossy hair on the cushions he'd been leaning against, her perfect pale skin set off by an ivory satin nightgown. Her eyes were as his had been, wide, terrified, confused.

As he panted, he clutched his pounding chest and tried to decipher what was real.

“Your face,” she said eventually. “God...your shirt. What happened?”

Who was she? he asked himself. The dream or...what he saw now?

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she whispered, covering the base of her throat with her hand.

Vin glanced down at his fly. It was closed and his belt was done up, his cock soft in his boxer briefs. Glancing around the room, he found everything was as it always appeared, in perfect, luxurious order, the flames from the fire setting the scene off to gorgeous effect.

“Shit...” he groaned.

Devina sat up slowly, like she was afraid of spooking him again.

Staring down at the liquor bottle on the floor next to the couch, she said, “You're drunk.”

True enough. Dead drunk. To the point where he wasn't sure he could stand...to the point where he could start to hallucinate...to the point that maybe none of that had just happened. Which would be a blessing.

Yeah, the idea that it was all nothing but a bourbon-fueled nightmare calmed him more than any amount of deep breathing.

With a surge, he went to stand up, but his balance was shot, so he lurched around and slammed into the wall.

“Here, let me help you.”

He held up his hand to stop her. “No, stay...”
Away.
“I'm all right. I'm cool.” Vin collected himself and, when he'd steadied out, he searched her face. All he saw was love and concern and confusion. Hurt, too.

She appeared to be nothing other than a spectacularly attractive woman who cared about the man she was looking at. “I'm going to go to bed,” he said.

Vin headed out of the room, and she followed him upstairs in silence.

As he tried not to feel stalked, he reminded himself that she wasn't the problem. He was.

When he came to the doorway to the master bath, he said, “Gimme a minute.”

After shutting himself in, he turned on the shower, took off his clothes, and got under the hot water. He couldn't feel the spray, even on his busted face, and took it as evidence that however drunk he thought he was, he should be a little more generous in his assessment.

When he stepped out, Devina was waiting with a towel for him. He didn't let her dry him off, even though she no doubt would have done a better job, and he put a pair of pajama bottoms on even though he normally slept naked.

They settled into bed, side by side but not touching, the television's flickering like that of a fireplace with blue flames. In a moment of madness, he wondered if the walls were going to melt up here, too, but no. They stayed the same.

On the TV, Fred and Ginger were dancing around, her gown swinging wide, his tails doing the same.

Either Vin hadn't been out for very long or this was a marathon on whatever channel she'd chosen.

“Won't you tell me what happened?” Devina said. “Just a bar fight.”

“Not with Jim, I hope?”

“He was on my side.”

“Oh. Good.” Silence. Then, “Do you need to go to the doctor?”

“No.”

More silence. “Vin...what were you dreaming about?”

“Let's go to sleep.”

When she reached for the remote to turn the TV off, he said, “Leave it on.”

“You never sleep with the television on.”

Vin frowned as he watched Fred and Ginger moving in sync, their eyes locked as if they couldn't bear to look away. “Tonight's different.”

Pounding on his door woke Jim up the next morning.

Even though he'd been dead asleep, he was instantly conscious... and pointing the muzzle of a forty across the studio. With the blinds drawn across the big window in the front and the two small ones down over the kitchen sink, he had no idea who it could be.

And considering his past, it might not be a friend.

Dog, who was tucked in beside him, lifted his head and let out a ripple of inquiry. “Not a clue who it is,” Jim said, throwing the covers off and going buck naked to the far side of the front drapes. Parting them ever so slightly, he saw the M6 parked in his driveway. “Vin?”

he called out. “Yeah,” came the muffled response. “Hold on.”

Jim put the gun back in the holster that hung on the bedpost and pulled on a pair of boxers. When he opened his door, Vin diPietro was standing on the other side, looking like a hot mess. Although he'd had a wash and a shave and changed into rich-guy casual clothes, his face was bruised and his expression was grim as hell.

“You see the news yet?” he said.

“No.” Jim backed up so the guy could come in. “How'd you find me?”

“Chuck told me where you lived. I would have called, but he didn't have your number.” Vin went to the television and turned the thing on. As he flipped through the channels, Dog went over and gave him a sniffing.

Guy must have passed, because the animal sat on his loafer.