Hybrid (13 page)

Apparently, he had heard something. He took a step back out of surprise, then suddenly screamed and lunged at her. Mittens, now the size of a bear, exploded from his crouch. Amanda was struck by the thought that the Dark Man hadn’t seen Mittens the Bear. She sidestepped their collision as the two tumbled into the sand. Mittens was up first, and he bit deep into the Dark Man’s right shoulder. At that instant, an explosion of blue light blinded Amanda.

She awoke in agony, her face and chest burning from the flash. Her skin was searing, almost as if she had been splashed with a powerful acid. Blindly, she rolled out of bed and stumbled over to the sink; but before she reached it, the pain was gone. She stood over the sink, her chest heaving, and her heart hammering against her ribs. She blinked several times, but all she could see were blue dots. Slowly, her vision returned to normal. She studied her reflection in the mirror, but her skin appeared to be unharmed. She rubbed her face and chest, and they both felt normal. She looked back at the bed, and instead of finding a pile of smoking, charred linen, there were only rumpled sheets. She had managed to knock over the bedside clock, and its upside-down numbers told her that she had been asleep for less than sixteen minutes.

It hadn’t gone as planned, but it had turned out better than he could have hoped. He had met the old man briefly two months earlier when he had first started following Rucker, but he had long forgotten George Van Der; he just didn’t seem relevant at the time. Reisch had originally intended another of Phil’s neighbors, the pretty little mother who lived across the street, as his mark. She had caught his eye on several occasions, and each time he had found himself aroused, which made her unusual, and therefore interesting. He had grown beyond desires of the flesh—the very thought of sex nauseated him. Rutting was something animals did. Still, she was capable of eliciting a physical reaction from him, which at some level was disturbing and enticing. On several dark nights he pondered this weakness, finally concluding that he was changing, but not yet changed. His evolution was a process and not an event, and parts of him had taken a step backwards in anticipation of a leap forward. This theory also nicely explained the presence of the madness, and the irrational need for violence. At some point his ordered mind and ordered life would return.
Ex chaos ordo.

Until then, he had to deal with the reality of the situation, and presently, that required a sacrifice on her part. Years ago, when the madness first began, a blood sacrifice had been sufficient; but as time went on, more was required. A simple violent death would no longer appease the demon; it demanded body, mind, and soul.

On the drive to her house, he could barely contain his excitement. It had been over a year since he last had taken a mother, and that had been one of the most satisfying experiences of his life. It had lasted nearly six hours; and she struggled exquisitely all the way until the end, when she willingly offered her very being to him. He had hopes that this woman would prove to be even better; she was younger, so were her children, and she had much more to live for. He would touch her, stroke her, have her, and when the moment was right, when the horror had reached unimaginable heights, when every coherent thought and shred of will had dissolved away, he would destroy her.

But she wasn’t home. Her house was dark, and her carport was empty.

The madness within him raged, and only an act of extreme violence and bloodshed would appease it. He imagined driving his car through the front of her house, crashing through her picture window, and destroying everything she owned. He would search for a pet—a dog or a cat—and he saw himself tearing it apart with his teeth, its hot blood smeared over his face, the thick coppery taste filling his mouth. But even this wouldn’t be enough, not by a long stretch. She would now have to pay for denying him, and it would cost much more than the life of a pet. Two children lived in the house—a toddler and a preschooler. That something might happen to them was her ultimate fear, far greater than any fear of being physically violated. But he would have to wait until they returned before he could act. Only, he couldn’t wait. Soon, the madness would overwhelm caution and experience.

The sound of a motor disturbed his tortured thoughts, and Reisch looked up to find George Van Der attacking a snowdrift with his blower. Plumes of snow shot high into the air, and Reisch accepted Fate’s decision.

Killing the old man hadn’t been nearly as gratifying as killing the young mother would have been, but it had been better than he had expected. The old man’s mind had been stronger than his failing body. At first, he resisted Reisch mightily, which only made the inevitable collapse more satisfying. He died slowly, horrific images filling his mind, while Reisch watched. He fed off the old man’s terror as a vampire feeds off its victim’s blood.

The bonus, which made up for his missed opportunity with the pretty mother, was having Rucker discover him. It was almost as if everything had come full circle. Phil had become somewhat of a problem of late. His mind had become more difficult to access, and Reisch didn’t have a satisfactory explanation as to why. No one had ever been able to resist him as well; of course, Reisch had never given so much attention to one individual before. It was possible that the frequent forays into Phil’s mind had led to a type of resistance. It made sense, but Reisch was still somewhat uneasy.

It doesn’t matter how he’s doing it
, Reisch thought. The whole episode would wear more on Phil’s mind than his, and it wouldn’t take too much more for Phillip Rucker to be consumed by his own mental chaos.

After killing Van Der, Reisch had slowly driven back to the hotel, basking in the ecstasy of another life absorbed into his being. The only thing left of George Van Der was now a part of him. He had quieted the madness, and anytime he wanted, he could reach back into his memory and feel George struggling for life. It had been a good morning, and he had turned his mind back to Amanda. As he stripped off his jacket, he imagined that he could almost reach out and touch her. The certainty that today was the day he would find her filled his racing heart. He had restored the balance that had always guided him, and now it directed him to the Flynns. They knew where their daughter-in-law was hiding, and before the day was out they would tell him. He had enough of circumspection; the direct approach had always served him well, and he knew that it would not fail him this day. He stood to retrieve his jacket, and a wave of fatigue rolled over him. It wasn’t uncommon after a kill, and despite the fact that he had already slept nearly four hours, he reasoned that a nap was probably in order. He crawled beneath the covers and fell deeply asleep, feeling like a lion that had eaten its full.

Every dream he had ever had as an adult started out in exactly the same way. A six-year-old Klaus sat at a small kitchen table watching his mother make breakfast on a rainy Saturday morning. She was droning on about something that was completely mindless, and Klaus finally stopped pretending to listen. He wondered how he could have sprung from this utterly inconsequential person. This wasn’t a new thought; he had wondered about it most of his life, so why his mind kept coming back to this point in his childhood he couldn’t explain. It had no particular importance as far as he knew, but it always had to play out before the good stuff started.

He loved watching himself kill women. Their fear was so real he could actually taste it. He didn’t hate women, at least no more than he hated men; they were just better fear factories. In his dream, he had just finished cutting off the clothes of a screaming blonde when a powerful consciousness outside the reality of his dream interrupted him. It wasn’t human, and it came from a plane of existence far beyond human thought. It was his plane, his special world, and something had invaded it. He left the blonde behind. She would wait; she had no choice. He had sacrificed her to his demon three years earlier. His mind floated upward—at least, it felt upward—but it could have been downward or sideways as far as he knew. It was a familiar trek, and he didn’t need to worry about directions. He reached the Barrier, which marked the limit of human thought and existence. Beyond, it was a world that until now had been his and his alone. He had been the only one to ever breach this barrier, the only one to sever the bonds that confined consciousness to a physical reality. The key was to relax, and the barrier would open. Try to force it, and it would forever remain closed. It had taken him months to learn this simple trick. His mind became a void, free of thoughts, emotions, memories, and finally existence, only to re-form an instant later in his new, special world. Except now, it was someone else’s world.

He was on a beach, and he hated the beach. The sun, the heat, the bugs, the salt, the sand, the wind—he loathed everything about the beach. He tried to change it with a thought, but nothing happened. It should have changed, but it didn’t. She had control.
Amanda.
So his question was answered. She had evolved just as he had. He wasn’t alone anymore. He had thought about this moment for more than six months, from the moment he learned of her.

A blast of hot wind suddenly knocked him down. He rolled down a small hill, but the wind seemed to follow. Four more times he was brushed by it, and each gust seemed hotter than the last. Reisch didn’t know the rules of this new reality, but it was becoming obvious that Amanda did. A lone figure appeared at the crest of a dune, and for a long moment, they stared at each other. At first, he couldn’t see her clearly, and he suspected that was her intent. She was caught off guard by his arrival and was naturally cautious. He reached for her mind, but she blocked him. He could feel her suspicion and a good deal more. Hostility and anger were tempered by curiosity. He sifted through her emotions, and a part of him was disappointed that there was no fear. He wasn’t ready to reveal his true form or intent, and instead, projected his usual dark and sinister guise, which had, up until this point, reliably provoked some degree of terror. She moved closer, and he could see that she now felt comfortable enough to reveal her true self. She was older than he had expected, but still very lovely.

“I know who and what you are,” Reisch said in a slightly threatening tone. He wanted to regain the upper hand. Amanda simply stared back at him with a questioning look. He repeated himself, only louder, and she still didn’t understand. She mouthed some words at him, and now it was Reisch who didn’t understand. Out of nowhere, a wave of hostility struck him, the heat of animosity prickling his skin. He looked back at Amanda, but her questioning expression hadn’t changed.

“Why did you do that?” he demanded, but her only answer was an even stronger wave. His face actually felt singed. This was getting out of hand. He took a step toward her, but she didn’t back away. She looked more than frustrated and started to speak again, but all he could hear was a screeching sound. The screeching only got worse as a third wave of hate hit him. He stumbled backward from the intensity of it. Somehow, she could cause him pain, a great deal of pain. A blinding rage overwhelmed him, and he lunged for her.

That was the last thing he remembered before waking up in his hotel room, blind, unable to move his right arm, and screaming. He was certain that somehow his arm had been torn off and that his upper body had been set on fire. He rolled to his left and continued rolling until he found himself on the floor entangled in the sheets, his maimed arm beneath him. He tried to move, but it only made the agony worse. He was going to die on the floor of a cheap hotel room, wrapped tight in bed linen, screaming in pain, and there was nothing he could do about it. He felt the blackness starting to envelop him. He struggled with all his remaining strength, but the pain and the darkness overwhelmed him.

There was no doubt in Nathan Martin’s mind: EDH
1
had mutated into a new virus, and now it was working its way through the population of Colorado. They would do more testing, get fresh specimens, and do their own cultures, but he knew in his heart that none of it would disprove what he already knew. It had taken the FBI less than an hour to determine that Amanda Flynn’s e-mails originated from an Internet café in Boulder, Colorado. There wasn’t much mystery in figuring out from where this new strain had come. Agents were looking for her all over Boulder and Denver; with a snowstorm stopping all travel, they had a reasonable shot of finding her. They had to find her; he didn’t even want to imagine the consequences if she remained at large.