Bryan closed his eyes and rubbed them hard with the heels of his hands. He wasn’t crazy. He
“I’ll burn you to the ground,” Bryan said. “Burn you and piss on the coals.”
Bryan bit hard into the heel of his left hand. The pain rose up, clearing his thoughts. That helped. He wasn’t crazy. He wasn’t.
He walked to a window and peeked in. Beyond the glass, the dull gleam of metal revealed some kind of inside shutter. It looked just as tough as the cellar entrance.
He’d have to try the front door.
Bryan drew his Sig Sauer and walked down the side of the house, his left shoulder almost touching the slate-blue wood, shadows curling around him in a lover’s embrace.
Pookie turned onto Franklin Street, then floored it. The Buick’s engine roared. He kept to the middle lane as much as he could, swerving left or right when he needed to, running red lights with little care for what might happen.
He’d dressed for the occasion. No ill-fitting suit jacket this time. Black jeans, black shoes, a black sweater stretched over his gut, and the black Glock 22 in the black holster attached to his black belt. It was a fashion statement that would win the Bryan Clauser seal of approval. Pookie didn’t use the bubble-light or the siren. Couldn’t draw attention. If any other cops showed up, the Terminator was screwed.
He hoped Black Mr. Burns would get there quick.
The Harley’s big twin engine roared at the night, the sound bouncing off the buildings on either side to fill the street with an echoing, angry gurgle.
John forced himself to breathe. His neck already hurt from trying to look in all directions at once. So many buildings, so many windows, so many places for someone to hide, to point a gun.
He rolled the throttle back and the Harley picked up speed. He slipped around a truck, then lane-split between a pair of BMWs. Maybe someone was aiming at him right now, tracking him, lining up the shot.
The feeling pressed his chest inward like a tightening vise wrapped all the way around his ribs. His breaths came faster. He was starting to hyperventilate.
He shook his helmeted head. Bryan needed him. So did Pookie.
Just this once. He could push the fear down just this
Gun in hand, Bryan walked up the mansion’s wide steps. Traffic rolled along on Franklin Street behind him, but it was a part of some other world, some other dimension.
Bryan stood before the front door. The porch roof blocked the streetlights, bathing him in the night’s thick black. He reached out a hand, let his fingertips touch the double doors’ ornate wood.
“Shut up,” Bryan hissed. “Shut up, I’m not hearing this.”
“You talk too much,” Bryan said, then he raised his left foot and kicked just below the door handle. Wood cracked with a cannon-blast sound. The double doors flew open, the right one tumbling into the hallway beyond to crash hard against the floor. The door had looked a lot more solid than that; must have been some cheap pine and not the old oak Bryan had thought it was at first glance.
Then came the blaring shrill of an alarm.
Bryan walked inside. He didn’t notice his surroundings. He was looking for one thing and one thing only.
Somewhere in here was a door to the basement.
The break-in tripped a magnetic sensor, which sent a signal down a thin wire to the small alarm-control box in the basement. That had triggered the Klaxon that screeched through the house, but the system wasn’t finished. A telephone wire ran out of the control box into a multi-line office phone, the kind that had once been white but had yellowed with well over two decades of age. The phone had a handset, next to which ran a vertical line of eight buttons, each with a red light. The red light next to LINE ONE lit up. The phone’s speaker let out a brief dial tone, then seven rapid digital beeps.
Pookie saw the tall turret of Erickson’s mansion up on the left. Cars lined the curb, leaving nowhere to park. He saw the house’s driveway — it was wide open. He didn’t want to park there and draw attention from anyone who might be in the house, but he was out of time. He pulled in, locking up the breaks to skid agross the gravel. He grabbed his Streamlight Stinger flashlight and was out the door even before the Buick rocked back from the sudden stop. He heard the house’s ringing alarm. Pookie ran to the mansion’s steps, up to the porch, and saw the smashed-open front doors.
Bryan was already inside. Pookie had to get him out.
In the distance, over the alarm’s blare, he heard the oncoming heavy gurgle of a Harley.
Pookie drew his Glock. Gun in one hand, flashlight in the other, he entered the house, stepping past the fallen door that lay flat on the entryway floor. The alarm screeched its constant, metallic tone. Pookie knelt and aimed his flashlight beam at the door’s edge — it was solid oak. Almost
The bar was bent at one end.
Bryan had ripped through a superthick door, two big deadbolts, and a fucking
Pookie remembered seeing Bryan jump up on top of the van. It had been dark … he’d been far away … his eyes had been playing tricks on him, et cetera, et cetera. He’d told himself those things, deluded himself into thinking that Bryan was just Bryan and not something else.
Images flashed in Pookie’s thoughts: a cloaked man jumping across a street, from one building to the next; a body with the arm ripped off at the shoulder; Robin talking about new genes and mutations.
Everything connected.
“Oh, shit,” Pookie said.
Bryan was in more trouble than either of them had ever imagined.
Pookie stood, let his flashlight beam play across the house’s dark interior as he walked deeper inside.
The sounds of nighttime traffic filtered up from the street four stories below. The evening wind danced by, not quite strong enough to ruffle his green cloak. His ears had long since tuned out the normal sounds of the city. The only things that he really heard, that he really listened for, were gunshots, screams and — sometimes — the roars.
Below him was Rex Deprovdechuk’s house. Police tape across the door. Would the kid come back? Unknown, but where else to look? Rex had vanished, as had Alex Panos.
Staking out Alex’s apartment had paid off. Alex had come home. The result? Another dead member of Marie’s Children. The Issac boy had died up on the roof, but that was how things went.
Everyone dies eventually.
Beneath the heavy cloak, he felt a buzz from his pager.
His hands did a fast, automatic pat-down: bow tight on his back; quiver secured, all ten shafts in place; Fabrique Nationale 5.7-millimeter handgun secure in the holster strapped to his left thigh; four loaded, twenty-round magazines at the small of his back; silver-coated Ka-Bar knife snug in the sheath on his right thigh; and minigrenades strapped to the bandolier across his chest — two concussion, two thermite, two shrapnel.
