the sun. She heard his low breathing, like the grunting rasp of an animal. She breathed the sour stench of his sweat. Her stomach fluttered.
Reaching behind her, she groped in the trash lining the alley for something to fight him with. Her bandaged hands sifted through a scatter of broken glass, the shards too small to be of use as weapons. Near the glass lay a mound of rain-soaked newspapers. A record album broken in two pieces. A Styrofoam fast-food container. Somebody’s shoe.
She picked up the shoe and pitched it at him, a final, desperate, meaningless gesture. He brushed it aside with a cough of laughter.
After that, she was finished; her pitiful last stand was over. She lowered her head and waited for him to do what he would. She hoped he would shoot her. A bullet would be quick.
Then softly he spoke to her, and strangely his voice was gentle, almost kind.
“Don’t be afraid, Wendy. I’m not going to hurt you. Not this time.”
Slowly she lifted her gaze and stared up at him through the webwork of hair plastered to her face.
“Oh, I admit I wanted to hurt you very badly last night. I wanted to do terrible things to you. But then I saw that I was wrong. That I’d missed the significance of what had gone on between us. That I’d failed to appreciate you properly. I saw that only a most exceptional woman could play the game so well.”
“The…” Her voice cracked. “The game?”
“I saw,” he went on, unhearing, the words dripping in a slow metronomic cadence, “that it could not have been an accident that I selected you. Out of all the lesser women I might have chosen, I had been led to the only one on earth who made a worthy adversary. Such things are never the product of chance. No, it was destiny that brought us together.”
He chuckled, embarrassed by his own eloquence.
“That sounds so cornball, doesn’t it? Like something in a Hallmark card. But I’m serious. I believe in destiny, in fate. I believe in a deeper meaning that transcends the ordinariness of life. And with that same faith, by the light of that same understanding, I believe we were meant for each other.”
He gazed down at her fondly. He was smiling. A shy, almost boyish smile.
“What I’m trying to say is… I love you.”
As Wendy watched, unable to move or speak or think, the Gryphon reached into the pocket of his coat and handed her a small clay statuette.
24
Wendy accepted the statue with numb fingers. She stared at it, turning it slowly in her hand.
“See the detail,” the Gryphon breathed. “The delicacy of the carving.”
“Very pretty,” she said quietly.
“Like you.”
She went on studying the figurine between her fingertips. Her body was a huddle of shock. Her mind was empty. She felt as if that hammer of his, the one he’d used to smash the car window last night, had slammed down on her brain and made it into mush.
“You… you said you love me,” she whispered at last.
“Yes.”
“But…” She almost choked on the words, on the idea of having this conversation with this man. “But that’s impossible. That’s…”
Crazy, she wanted to say, but didn’t.
“Of course it’s impossible, Wendy. Every great thing is impossible. That’s precisely what makes it great. That’s what greatness is: the act of overcoming. Overcoming the possible, the normal, the mundane.”
She swallowed, barely hearing him, her mind occupied with a new question. “Is this the statue you were going to give me last night?”
“Yes. But now it holds a very different significance.”
“Does it?”
“Yes, it does. Then it was a marker of death. Now it is a token of my love to you. You must believe that, Wendy.”
He kept saying her name, as if he took pleasure in pronouncing it. Her first name only; she wasn’t Miss Alden to him anymore. The obscene familiarity implied in his choice of words revolted her.
She drew a sharp breath. “Look. If you’re serious about… about what you said… then let me go. Let me just walk out of here.”
“No.”
“But if you”-say it, go on, say it-“if you love me…”
“I do love you. Honestly, I do. But I can’t release you, because you don’t understand what’s happened between us. Not yet, anyway.”
He knelt before her, tapping the pistol lightly against one knee. His sunglasses gazed blankly at her like insect eyes.
“I don’t blame you. I don’t question your lack of faith in me.” He sighed heavily, a melodramatic, grandiloquent sigh. “This world is so choked with ugliness and pettiness and commonness. Sometimes it seems hard to believe that any genuine beauty or spirituality could exist here. But look, Wendy.”
His hand closed lightly over her wrist, lifting the figurine closer to her face.
“If something as special as this can be shaped out of mud, out of dirt, then so can the love that is our destiny.” He shrugged. “But until you see the truth in what I’m saying, until you’re willing to accept it, I’m afraid I simply can’t let you out of my sight.”
His grip on her wrist tightened. He stood up and pulled her to her feet. Her legs felt weak and wobbly. There was a frightening tilt to the ground that hadn’t been there before.
“Now, come along,” he said as if to a hesitant child. He gave her arm a little tug. “Come on.”
She let him lead her back to the white Ford, its door still hanging open. He released her hand, and she sagged against the car, her knees buckling. She had no idea what he would do next. She almost didn’t care. Fear had drained out of her, leaving her hollow.
“Now, please… get in.”
She obeyed. As she was settling into the passenger seat, he leaned in and tapped her arm. “Behind the wheel, if you don’t mind.”
She realized he wanted her to drive. He’d made her enter on the passenger side only to ensure that she would never be out of his reach.
With difficulty she climbed into the driver’s seat. Sliding in beside her, he shut the door and handed her a set of keys. She stashed the clay statue in the pocket of her blouse, then turned the ignition key in the slot. The engine growled.
“Excellent,” he said pleasantly. “I don’t know about you, but I feel that this whole thing really is working out quite well.”
His grating cheerfulness only made things worse. If things could be worse. If anything could be worse than this.
“Where are we going?” she asked flatly.
“I’ll tell you in a second. But first, listen to me. Listen good.”
She stared straight ahead, rigid in her seat.
“Look at me when I talk to you.”
Reluctantly she turned toward him. For the first time she looked, really looked, at his face. She saw brown hair, curly and close-cropped. A high forehead. Thick brows. A fleshy nose, humorless mouth, square clean-shaven chin.
It was not the face of a monster, not a face that belonged in a lineup or a mug shot or a chamber of horrors. It was a face she could pass on any street, a face so ordinary it almost didn’t exist.
Then, with a small, distant shock, Wendy realized she knew that face from somewhere. But she had no
