Dragon Tears

been to slaughter two of them, lightning quick, and leave the others with the memory of his power and merciless judgment. But then he became excited by their abject terror at the inexplicable manifestation of that movie monster. He thrilled to the feel of his claws ripping through their flesh, the heat of spurting blood, the rank steaming gush of disembowelment, the crack of bones as fragile as chalk sticks in his monstrous hands. The screams of the dying were piercingly shrill at first but became weak, tremulous, erotic; they surrendered their lives to him as lovers might have surrendered, so exhausted by the intensity of their passion that they succumbed only with sighs, whispers, shudders. For a few minutes he was the creature that he had created, all razored teeth and talons, spiked spine and lashing tail, having forgotten about his real body in which his mind actually reposed. When he regained his senses, he discovered he had killed all ten men beneath the overpass and stood in a charnel house of blood, eviscerated torsos, severed heads and limbs.

He hadn’t been shocked or daunted by the degree of violence he’d wrought — only that he’d killed them all in a mindless frenzy. Learning control was vital if he were to accomplish his mission and Become.

He had used the power of pyrokinesis to set the bodies afire, searing them with flames so intense that even bones were vaporized. He always disposed of those on whom he practiced because he didn’t want ordinary people to know that he walked among them, at least not until his power had been perfected and his vulnerability was nil.

That was also why for the time being he focused his attentions primarily on street people. If they were to report being tormented by a demon who could change shape at will, their complaints would be dismissed as the ravings of mentally deranged losers with drug and alcohol addictions. And when they vanished from the face of the earth, no one would care or attempt to discover what had happened to them. Someday soon, however, he would be able to bring holy terror and divine judgment to people in all strata of society.

So he practiced.

Like a magician improving his dexterity.

Control. Control.

On the beach, the winged form leapt off the sand from which it had been born. It flapped into the night, like a truant gargoyle returning to a cathedral parapet. It hovered before his window, peering in with luminous yellow eyes.

Although it was a brainless thing until he projected part of himself into it, the pterodactyl was nevertheless an impressive creation. Its immense leathery wings fluidly fanned the air, and it easily remained aloft on the updrafts along the bluff.

Bryan was aware of the eyes in the jars behind him. Staring. Watching him, astonished, admiring, adoring.

“Be gone,” he said to the pterodactyl, indulging in theatrics for his audience.

The winged reptile turned to sand and rained on the beach below.

Enough play. He had work to do.

5

Harry’s Honda was parked near the municipal building, under a streetlamp.

Early spring moths, having come out in the wake of the rain, swooped close to the light. Their enormous, distorted shadows played over the car.

As she and Harry crossed the sidewalk toward the Honda, Connie said, “Same question. Now what?”

“I want to get into Ordegard’s house and have a look around.”

“What for?”

“I don’t have a clue. But it’s the only other thing I can think to do. Unless you’ve got an idea.”

“Wish I did.”

As they approached the car, she saw something dangling from the rearview mirror, rectangular and softly gleaming beyond the moth shadows that swarmed over the windshield. As far as she could recall, there had been no air-freshener or ornament of any kind tied to the mirror.

She was the first into the car and got a close look at the silvery rectangle before Harry did. It was dangling on a red ribbon from the’ mirror shank. Initially she didn’t realize what it was. She took hold of it, turned it so the light struck it more clearly, and saw that it was a handcrafted belt buckle worked with Southwest motifs.

Harry got in behind the wheel, slammed his door, and saw what she held in her hand.

“Oh, Jesus,” Harry said. “Oh, Jesus, Ricky Estefan.”

6

Most of the roses had taken a beating from the rain, but a few blooms had come through the storm untouched. They bobbed gently in the night breeze. The petals caught the light spilling from the kitchen windows and seemed to magnify it, glowing as if radioactive.

Ricky sat at the kitchen table, from which his tools and current projects had been removed. He had finished dinner more than an hour ago and had been sipping port wine ever since. He wanted to get a buzz on.

Before being gutshot, he’d not been much of a drinker, but when he had wanted a drink, he’d been a tequila and beer man. A shot of Sauza and a bottle of Tecate were as sophisticated as he got. After all the abdominal surgeries he endured, however, a single jigger of Sauza — or any other hard liquor — gave him intense heartburn and a sour stomach that lasted the better part of a day. The same was true of beer.

He learned that he could handle liqueurs well enough, but getting drunk on Baileys Irish Cream or creme de menthe or Midori required the ingestion of so much sugar that his teeth would rot long before he did any damage to his liver. Regular wines did not go down well, either, but port proved to be just the thing, sweet enough to soothe his delicate gut but not so sweet as to induce diabetes.

Good port was his only indulgence. Well, good port and a little self-pity now and then.

Watching the roses nodding in the night, he sometimes pulled his gaze back to a closer point of focus and stared at his reflection in the window. It was an imperfect mirror, revealing to him a colorless transparent countenance like that of a haunting spirit; but perhaps it was an accurate reflection, after all, because he was a ghost of his former self and in some ways dead already.

A bottle of Taylor’s stood on the table. He refilled his port glass and took a sip.

Sometimes, like now, it was difficult to believe that the face in the window was actually his. Before he’d been shot, he had been a happy man, seldom given to troubled introspection, never a brooder. Even during recuperation and rehabilitation, he had retained a sense of humor, an optimism about the future that no amount of pain could entirely darken.

His face had become the face in the window only after Anita left. More than two years later, he still had difficulty believing that she was gone — or figuring out what to do about the loneliness that was destroying him more surely than bullets could have done.

Raising his drink, Ricky sensed something wrong just as he brought it to his mouth. Perhaps he subconsciously registered the lack of a port-wine aroma — or the faint, foul smell of what had replaced it. He stopped as he was about to tilt the glass to his lips, and saw what it contained: two or three fat, moist, entwined earthworms, alive and oozing languorously around one another.

Startled, he cried out, and the glass slipped from his fingers. Because it dropped only a couple of inches onto the table, it didn’t shatter. But when it tipped over, the worms slithered onto the polished pine.

Ricky pushed his chair back, blinking furiously—

— and the worms were gone.

Spilled wine shimmered on the table.

He halted halfway to his feet, his hands on the arms of his chair, staring in disbelief at the puddle of ruby- red port.

He was sure he had seen the worms. He wasn’t imagining things. Wasn’t drunk. Hell, he hadn’t even