HORROR THRILLERS-A Box Set of Horror Novels (29 page)

“
What if he
gets worse?”

“
If he gets a
fever that lasts longer than a few hours, come back for me—if
you find some more money, that is.”

“
You're not
going to come back to see about him?”

“
For the money
you gave me I shouldn't even have come this time and done an
impromptu surgery in a filthy hotel room. Now get out of my way.”
The doctor pushed past the little man and left the room.

Nick was still
unconscious. Jody hoped he would come to soon, but the doctor had
given him nothing for the pain. Maybe he wished Nick would stay out
until he healed a little.

Oh hell and
damnation, Jody thought, this is bad, this is real bad.

He couldn't leave
Nick and find work and they didn't have enough money to pay for the
room for long, not if they wanted to ever book passage on a ship.
They couldn't spend their sailing money! What was he going to do? How
could an angel be so susceptible to harm this way? He had wings, by
God, how could a knife kill him?

He pulled up the
chair to the bed and sat on it, his legs swinging above the floor.
His brow furrowed, his eyes narrowed. He could smell the blood, like
wet copper wafted below his nostrils. Nick had been lifted and the
brown cover throw off the bed. It lay now like a curled black and
brown snake on the floor at the foot of the bed. Nick lay back
against dingy white sheets and pillowcase.

Jody watched Nick in
the weak lamplight, watched his chest rise and fall rhythmically.
What a beautiful creature he was. So tall. So good looking. And his
wings when he raised them, though black, were majestic. How could God
let a creature such as this be so vulnerable?

He needed to talk to
God about this. But God never talked to people, did He? He'd never
answer Jody's questions.

The dim light at the
one window waned and the night came on dark, deep, and mysterious.
Lights blinked and streamed from bars along the street and flickered
from cars passing by the hotel. Jody was hungry; in fact, he felt he
was starving, but he ignored the growls coming from his stomach and
kept vigil. He loved this not-quite-man. He didn't know why, but it
was as if he could not help himself, as if his own existence depended
on this strange being.

He must keep him
alive. Keep him alive and safe at all costs.

CHAPTER 34

EATING THE SOUL

Before they left
Salt Lake City, Henry made her come with him into the abandoned
places.

Angelique tried to
refuse, but Henry was not someone who took no for an answer. “We'll
catch up with your man, don't worry. We have a little time for..shall
we say...a hunt, a hide and seek.”

It was night and
they were driving into a seedy downtown neighborhood where the street
was lined with bankrupt warehouses and closed businesses. It looked
as if the Great Depression had started right here and spread out
later to the rest of the country, growing worse as the days passed.
Not a soul moved along the sidewalks and there were no bulbs burning
in the street lights. They were either burned out and never replaced
or had been shattered by thugs throwing rocks.

“
Where are you
taking me?” She was annoyed and her child's voice went into a
whine when she felt that way. Her weakness and impatience annoyed her
even more. She clenched her fists at her sides and walked
stiff-legged.

“
Be patient. I
can smell them.”

She flinched. “You
can smell children?”

“
Many of them
have lost most of their innocence already. They're orphaned or
runaways. They have a scent. It's like...burning wires in a car. Or
raccoon nests full of excrement in an attic. Sometimes it's
like...ham that's set out too long and grown fluorescent green mold.”

Angelique wrinkled
her nose. She smelled nothing. She had thought she would be the one
to find him victims, but this time he was on his own.

Suddenly Henry
pulled to the curb and opened the car door. “Let's go,”
he said. “They're here.”

They were parked in
front of one of the warehouses. The windows were dark and those not
nailed over with boards shimmered like mirrors under the moonlight.

Henry headed for the
door and pushed against it with his shoulder. It gave but took some
effort. The floor inside was littered with fallen, broken brick,
layers of dust, and shattered glass. An old ragged blanket lay
crumpled in a corner. Strips of pale moonlight fell across the floor,
giving the impression of the place being a prison. It smelled of
dust and iron, of rotting wood, of things left unfinished.

Henry paused,
turning his head, either listening or sniffing, Angelique couldn't
tell which. Then he marched straight ahead and finally Angelique
could sense someone. She followed behind, intrigued.

Rounding a pillar
and across the open warehouse they saw them. Three people, one a
child. The little group was alert, sitting up on bundled covers. A
man rose. In his hand he carried a wooden bat.

“
Hey,”
Henry called.

“
What you
want?” the man called back. “What you doing here?”

“
Just a place
to stay the night.”

“
Not here,”
the man called out. “Find somewhere else.”

“
No,”
Henry said, “I think we like it right here.”

Now the man advanced
swinging the bat.

“
You don't
want to do that, friend,” Henry warned.

“
Maybe I do,
maybe I don't. And maybe you ought to take a hint and get the hell
out of here.”

The child, a girl
with shoulder-length scraggly brown hair, whimpered and moved behind
her still sitting mother. She's not as old as I am, Angelique
thought. It's her he wants.

Henry marched right
up to the man, a smile on his face. The smile disarmed the man and
caused him to hesitate. When Henry was close enough, he reached out
and hit the man on the chin with a closed fist. The man went down and
the bat fell from his hands. The woman rose to her feet, throwing out
her arms as if in that way she could stem the violence. The child
screamed.

Henry took up the
bat and brought it down over and over on the man's head until it
looked like a bloody burst melon. Then he moved toward the females.

Angelique again
followed, unable not to. She wanted to see what was going to happen.
Would he kill them both, too? Was murder his game? How plebeian. What
a common monster he was turning out to be.

Here more moonlight
invaded the room from big high grim-streaked windows. The woman
frantically turned in semi-circles looking for another weapon. She
fell on a backpack, but before she could get to whatever it held,
Henry had her by the hair of her head, slinging her onto her back on
the stained concrete floor. When the child ran to help her mother,
she was struck, propelled backward to land on her bottom. She
screamed louder while she watched Henry beat her mother to pulp.
Blood sprayed across the cement, the blood splatter black in the
moonlight. The woman hadn't even had time to give voice to a protest.

Then Henry dropped
the bat and reached for the child. That's when he changed. It
happened quicker than the human eye could follow. Angelique followed
a bit of the change, but it was like looking at a blurry picture. Now
she was looking at the squat, head-hanging, freak-skinned monster. He
bent the girl backwards over one knee and peered into her face. The
child was too afraid now to even make a sound. Her mouth stood open,
but nothing issued from it. Her eyes bulged and tears fell from
red-rimmed lids down her gray, shrunken cheeks.

Angelique stepped
closer. She felt it all—the child's terror, the monster's need,
the emptiness of the warehouse, the complete and utter loss of all
hope. She saw the moon reflected like a white marble in the girl's
glassy eyes. “Now what?” she asked, incapable of staying
quiet.

The creature turned
it's pendulous head on the thick, crusty neck and showed his
nightmare face. His nose was bulbous and the nostrils flared. His
eyes were the muddy green she remembered and in their depths she
could see things wriggling. Pus oozed from scabs and open raw wounds
gaped. “Watch this closely,” he said.

He returned his gaze
to the child. He leaned closer and closer to her terrified face.
“Pretty little one,” he whispered in a gravelly voice
that came from the depths of a fiery hell. “Come with me.”
The girl's back arched, her legs kicked, and her silent mouth opened
even wider. Her eyes rolled back into her head. The bar of silver
moonlight across her face revealed a tautness of the skin that made
Angelique think it might snap and split to show muscle and bone
beneath. But it held, the skin pressed against the tiny skull until
all the bone structure was apparent. She was pressing up, trying to
escape her frail body and the beast who bent over her.

Then the most
incredible thing happened that Angelique had ever seen. The soul made
itself known. It squeezed up past the esophagus, into the mouth, over
the tongue, and out the lips. It took the form of an achromatic,
foggy snake. The sinuous rope of soul rose up from the body and at
that precise moment, the beast swooped down and covered the little
girl's mouth with his own. The sucking sound echoed in the cavernous
warehouse and was more chilling than the screaming or the bashing of
a man and woman to death. The girl's chest first rose up, producing a
hump, and then it deflated, all the life-giving air from her small
body sucked out along with her small, gray soul.

She went limp. Dead.
A silence invaded the warehouse that was so deep they might have been
sequestered at the bottom of a mine. Or on a cold, frosted planet
lost in space.

A second later the
beast dropped the little body to the concrete, discarding her as
someone would drop off a bag of trash. He stood, hunched over with
his head down, chin on his chest.

“
Now she is
mine,” he said. “She's in my legion.”

Again, quicker than
the eye could see, he changed into the human she called Henry. One
second he was his true self, the unnatural monster, and the next he
was just another nameless human being. He stood tall, gangly,
throwing a stick shadow behind him. “Let's go,” he said.
“We're done here.” He kicked the bat aside and it rolled
across the warehouse floor alternately through pools of blood and
pools of moonlight, ending in darkness.

Angelique knew of no
creature like this, not in God's heaven, in the dark void, or on the
earth. “Where have you come from?” she asked. “What
are you doing here? Who made you? Where is your 'legion'?”

“
Enough time
for all that,” he said, starting off across the big warehouse
toward the door he'd entered, trusting she would follow.

Angelique knew she
could use such a powerful creature as this, but probably only if he
wanted her to. More likely, he would use her for some nefarious plot
of his own. If she let him manipulate her. Which she wouldn't.

She felt her buried
wings stir in her back and wondered if she should bring them out and
try to dispatch this ugly man-thing and be done with him.

But he hadn't
answered her questions yet. And she wanted to know everything. She
wanted to know it all.

It was morning, a
dim overcast San Francisco chilly morning, before Nick awoke. Jody,
having dozed on and off during the night, came to wakefulness right
away. He hopped from the chair and to the bedside. He scrubbed at his
eyes. “How are you?”

Nick blinked twice,
raised a hand to place on his bandaged stomach. He winched in pain
and removed his hand to let it fall on the bed at his side. “I'm
better. I think. I guess you found a doctor?”

“
Not much of
one, but I have to admit he was pretty meticulous while performing
surgery on you.”

“
Here? In the
bed?”

“
He didn't
have time for you to be transported anywhere. He said you were ten
minutes away from dying.”

“
I don't think
I can get up.”

“
No, you've
got to stay immobile. You can't even eat solid food for two weeks.
I'll go out and get some soup or some broth.”

Nick smiled weakly.
“You're a good friend, Jody. I don't know what I would have
done without you. You saved my life.”

“
Oh, gosh.”
Jody turned his back and headed for the door, dismissing any further
gratitude from Nick. Then he remembered. He turned back. “I
don't have any money left. I gave it all to the doctor to get him to
come here.”