But what to do now?
He sighed. The faint yellow glow from the floor lamp threw dim light all over the room. Curran liked keeping the lights on low, preferring soft subdued light to the harsh brilliance of fluorescent bulbs. Especially on a night like this when the cold November winds howled outside his windows. The dim light felt warm. And Curran had purposefully set his thermostat higher tonight. He could hear the creaks and pings of his radiator pipes pushing heat into all parts of the house.
Curran let his eyes close.
All things pointed at Darius as being involved somehow with the Soul Eater. Lauren told him the Soul Eater assumed the guise of a man. That meant in reality, Darius was something else.
A demon, she’d said.
Curran tried to wrack his mind for images of what a demon actually looked like. Did they have wings? Could they fly? What about horns? Scaly skin? A pointy tail?
He almost made himself laugh. The truth was probably a lot more terrifying than that.
And I’ve got to deal with it.
Nifty.
Lauren said there wasn’t much in the way of being able to take this guy down. He might fall to bullets when disguised as a man. But she’d quickly countered that by saying the last guy who tried had disappeared.
That made Curran feel even better.
A small part of him still privately wished this would simply turn out to be a lunatic who’d gotten his head around some old legend he’d once heard of. The killer had simply chosen to become this Soul Eater. Maybe he truly believed it, but that wouldn’t make him a demon.
And it would mean Curran could take him down legally and without having to resort to supernatural defenses — of which Curran was completely naive.
Proof, he thought. That’s what I need. Something that will connect Darius one hundred percent. Even if it’s only one hundred percent in my mind.
Because something still held him back. That tiny fragment of logic that had swollen in size after his faith had been so thoroughly destroyed by the pedophile priest, demanded its due.
But even Curran couldn’t justify everything logically. Too many strange occurrences had transpired. Too much weird stuff.
Spooky was more like it.
His eyes felt heavy. He needed sleep.
He stabbed out the quickly dying cigarette butt into the ashtray next to his favorite armchair. I ought to drop this habit, too.
Tomorrow, he decided. Maybe tomorrow he’d go and discuss things with his Captain. Get some advice. The craggy old bastard, a police vet of almost thirty years, he’d know what to do with something like this.
Either that or he’ll order me to get a psyche profile.
Curran padded into his bedroom and slid under the covers. He lay on his back, the way he always did when he first went to sleep. His hands folded across his chest, timing the rise and fall of his respirations. Tongue tip behind his upper teeth. This was the way he’d once read Soviet special forces used to sleep right before hey embarked on a mission. Curran had tried it and found it worked wonders for him.
His conscious mind began shutting down. The buzz of the workday slowed and the replay images of everything he’d seen during the previous fourteen hours faded to black. Small patterns appeared behind his eyelids and Curran felt his body begin to grow heavy, like it was sinking into the mattress itself.
He fell asleep.
When the first images zipped across his mind, his conscious self simply chalked it up as a dream.
But he knew better.
Darius’ face loomed before him. The quiet and mocking smile, brilliant white teeth, the salt-and-pepper hair.
“So you think you know me?”
The voice echoed inside his head. To anyone watching Curran while he slept, they would have simply assumed he’d entered REM sleep by the fast action of his eyes beneath their lids.
But Curran wasn’t dreaming.
Darius regarded him. “You’ve spent years of your life tracking me, haven’t you? And it must seem like such an eternity. All those cities. All those bodies. And yet you never figured it out.” He smiled again.
Curran wanted to talk to him. But he found he had no voice here in this limbo-like existence. Darius laughed. “You know, come tomorrow, part of you will argue this is simply a dream. That it’s simply some type of mental conjuration you’ve built up by being so involved with this case for so many years. The inevitable result, as it were, of your rather obsessive compulsive personality.”
Darius’ disembodied face zoomed closer. His voice grew soft. “But you’ll know better. Won’t you? You’ll know deep down inside that we did really communicate tonight. And my presence only serves to confirm that which you are so unsure about.'
He backed off. “Your friend.” His eyes closed. “Lauren. She’s fascinating. Have you ever known someone who could be so ruined by evil and yet emerge so wonderfully clean and good?”
He laughed. “I have walked this Earth for thousands upon thousands of years and never seen such an example of good. In truth, I am disgusted by it. But there is reason enough for such a woman to exist. One which will become obvious to you soon enough.”
Curran’s mind fought to speak. Slowly, painfully, he squeezed out the words: “
Darius’ laugh filled his head. “You really care for this woman, don’t you, detective? How utterly amusing. What is she to you? Have you found a woman who can finally stand your presence?”
His head zipped around the ethereal air in Curran’s mind. “You know how long I’ve watched you, Curran? You know how long? Ever since you first became aware of me. No, not since you learned it was really me as the man Darius. But ever since you started investigating the bodies I left behind. I’ve watched. Waited. And when my travels eventually directed me here to this pathetic town in which you’ve tried so hard to reconstruct a life, I felt joyous. At last. I knew we would meet. It was inevitable.”
Curran’s mind swam against the tide of images rushing at him. His arms felt like leaden weights had been poured into them.
“It’s no use trying to do that,” said Darius. “You’re well outmatched in this arena. Of course, that’s what happens when your faith suffers as yours has. When you only rely on your conscious mind — when your only tool is logic — your only reward is a mere fraction of reality.”
Darius regarded him. “You? You?” He laughed. “A silly suggestion at best and a stupid one at worst. You have no idea what purpose she plays in all of this. But you will. And you could never take her place. You’re two different people. Each one with their own destiny.” Darius’ face zoomed close again. “Would you like a glimpse of your own destiny, Curran? Would you?”
Before he could think about answering, Darius’ face changed. Gone were the white teeth and brilliant smile. In their place, long yellow fangs dripping with bloody gore. Long streaks of coarse black hair streamed out of a thorny skull, surrounded by greenish blackish skin that undulated in gross tidal waves of musculature.
Curran felt his stomach heave.
A new voice spoke now. “You see? While you’ve imagined me as one thing, you’ve been hunting another. And now that you know, it’s too late for you to do anything. And yet you still haven’t seen the end of this.”
The demon pulled back and Curran could see the rest of its body. Two arms that hung down close to its three-toed feet dangled like lethal pendulums, each topped with six claws that scraped across the floor of Curran’s skull.
It sounded like fingernails down the chalkboard.
“When I come for you, Curran, it will not be the same death as the others. You I will take the greatest joy in destroying. I will feast on you like I have not quenched my hunger in eons. Your flesh will be my delicacy. Your
