And judging by the total lack of lights, Rachael had not yet arrived. Where was she? He had driven very fast, but he did not believe he could have passed her on the highway.
As he thought about her, his heart began to pound. His vision acquired a crimson tint. The memory of blood made his saliva flow. That familiar cold rage spread out in icy crystals through his entire body, but he clenched his shark-fierce teeth and strove to remain at least functionally rational.
He parked the pickup on the graveled shoulder of the road more than a hundred yards past the Golden Sand, easing the front end into a shallow drainage ditch to give the impression that it had slid off the road and had been abandoned until morning. He switched off the headlights, then the engine. The pounding of the rain was louder now that the competing sound of the engine was gone. He waited until the eastbound and westbound lanes of the boulevard were deserted, then threw open the passenger-side door and got out into the storm.
He sloshed through the drainage ditch, which was full of racing brown water, and made his way across the barren stretch of desert toward the motel. He ran, for if a car came along Tropicana, he had nothing behind which to hide except a few tumbleweeds still rooted in the sandy soil and shaking in the wind.
Exposed to the elements, he again wanted to strip off his clothes and succumb to a deep-seated desire to run free through the wind and night, away from the lights of the city, into wild places. But the greater need for vengeance kept him clothed and focused on his objective.
The motel's small office occupied the northeast corner of the U-shaped structure. Through the big plate- glass windows, he could see only a portion of the unlighted room: the dim shapes of a sofa, one chair, an empty postcard rack, an end table and lamp, and the check-in desk. The manager's apartment, where Shadway had told Rachael to take shelter, was probably reached through the office. Eric tried the door, the knob disappearing in his huge leathery hand; it was locked, as he had expected.
Abruptly he saw a vague reflection of himself in the wet glass, a horned demonic visage bristling with teeth and twisted by strange bony excrescences. He looked quickly away, choking back the whimper that tried to escape him.
He moved into the courtyard, where doors to motel rooms lay on three sides. There were no lights, but he could see a surprising amount of detail, including the dark blue shade of paint on the doors. Whatever he was becoming, it was perhaps a creature with better night vision than a man possessed.
A battered aluminum awning overhung the cracked walkway that served all three wings, forming a shabby promenade. Rain drizzled from the awning, splashed onto the edge of the concrete walk, and puddled in a strip of grass that had been almost entirely choked out by weeds. His boots made thick squelching sounds as he walked through the weeds onto the concrete pool apron.
The swimming pool had been drained, but the storm was beginning to fill it again. Down at the deeper end of the sloped bottom, at least a foot of water had already collected. Beneath the water, an elusive — and perhaps illusory — shadowfire flickered crimson and silver, further distorted by the rippling of the fluid under which it burned.
Something about that shadowfire, more than any other before it, shot sparks of fear through him. Looking down into the black hole of the mostly empty pool, he was overcome by an instinctive urge to run, to put as much distance between himself and this place as possible.
He quickly turned away from the pool.
He stepped under the aluminum awning, where the tinny drumming of the rain made him feel claustrophobic, as if he were sealed inside a can. He went to room 15, near the center of the middle wing of the U, and tried the door. It was locked, too, but the lock looked old and flimsy. He stepped back and began kicking the door. By the third blow, he was so excited by the very act of destruction that he began to keen shrilly and uncontrollably. On the fourth kick, the lock snapped, and the door flew inward with a screech of tortured metal.
He went inside.
He remembered Shadway telling Rachael that electrical service had been maintained, but he did not switch on the lights. For one thing, he did not want to alert Rachael to his presence when, at last, she arrived. Besides, because of his drastically improved night vision, the dimensions of the lightless room and the contours of the furniture were revealed in sufficient detail to allow him to roam the chamber without falling over things.
Quietly he closed the door.
He moved to the window that looked out upon the courtyard, parted the musty, greasy drapes an inch or two, and peered into the lesser gloom of the blustery night. From here, he had a commanding view of the open end of the motel and of the door to the office.
When she came, he would see her.
Once she had settled in, he would go after her.
He shifted his weight impatiently from one foot to the other.
He made a thin, whispery, eager sound.
He longed for the blood.
Amos Zachariah Tate — the craggy-faced, squint-eyed trucker with the carefully tended handlebar mustache — looked as if he might be the reincarnation of an outlaw who had prowled these same solitary reaches of the Mojave in the days of the Old West, preying upon stagecoaches and pony-express riders. However, his manner was more that of an itinerant preacher from the same age: soft-spoken, most courteous, generous, yet hard-bitten, with firm convictions about the redemption of the soul that was possible through the love of Jesus.
He provided Ben not merely with a free ride to Las Vegas but with a wool blanket to ward off the chill that the truck's air conditioner threw upon his rain-sodden body, coffee from one of two large thermos bottles, a chewy granola bar, and spiritual advice. He was genuinely concerned about Ben's comfort and physical well-being, a natural-born Good Samaritan who was embarrassed by displays of gratitude and who was devoid of self- righteousness, which drained all of the potential offensiveness from his well-meant, low-key pitch for Jesus.
Besides, Amos believed Ben's lie about a desperately injured — perhaps dying — wife in the Sunrise Hospital in Vegas. Although Amos said he did not usually take the laws of the land lightly — even minor laws like speed limits — he made an exception in this case and pushed the big rig up to sixty-five and seventy miles an hour, which was as fast as he felt he dared go in this foul weather.
Huddled under the warm wool blanket, sipping coffee, chewing the sweet granola bar and thinking bitter thoughts of death and loss, Ben was grateful to Amos Tate, but he wished they could make even better speed. If love was the closest that human beings could hope to come to immortality — which was what he'd thought when in bed with Rachael — then he had been given a key to life everlasting when he had found her. Now, at the gates of that paradise, it seemed the key was being snatched out of his hand. When he considered the bleakness of life without her, he wanted to seize control of the truck from Amos, push the driver aside, get behind the wheel, and make the rig
But all he could do was pull the blanket a little tighter around himself and, with growing trepidation, watch the dark miles go by.
The manager's apartment at the Golden Sand Inn had been unused for a month or more, and it had a stale smell. Although the odor was not strong, Rachael repeatedly wrinkled her nose in distaste. There was a quality of putrescence in the smell which, over time, would probably leave her nauseated.
The living room was large, the bedroom small, the bathroom minuscule. The tiny kitchen was cramped and dreary but completely equipped. The walls did not look as if they had been painted in a decade. The carpets were threadbare, and the kitchen linoleum was cracked and discolored. The furniture was sagging and scarred and splitting at the seams, and the major kitchen appliances were dented and scraped and yellowing with age.
“Not a layout you're ever going to see in
As they had gone through the apartment, turning on lights, she had begun to tell him the real story behind the warrants for her and Benny's arrest. Now they pulled up chairs at the Formica-topped kitchen table, which was filmed with gray dust and ringed with a score of cigarette scars, and she told him the rest of it as succinctly as she could.
Outside, the moaning wind seemed like a sentient beast, pressing its featureless face to the windows as if it
