“You disapprove, I’m sorry. I’m okay. You can…I’ll be all right. I’m going back to my hotel to crash for a while. You’re a nice lady, though. Pretty, too,” he assured her.
She blushed.
“I’ll be all right,” he said. But he was leaning on her heavily. And those eyes of his!
She chastised herself. She was going to help him. And not because he had nice eyes and had paid her a compliment, she assured herself. She was going to help him because he needed help. It would only take her a few minutes out of her way to drop him at his hotel.
“Come on. I’ll give you a ride home.”
“You’re too kind.”
“Come on.”
He held onto her, accepting her aid. She got him over to her car and into the passenger seat. When she sat next to him, ready to put her key in the ignition, he suddenly looked out at the sky and cursed.
She frowned. He was staring toward the Cathedral, so she looked in that direction, too. It looked like there was a swarm of birds overhead.
In fact, even at this distance, it seemed that she could hear their fluttering wings.
“It’s just birds, maybe bats,” she said, intending to reassure him. But in fact he didn’t look nervous. He suddenly looked like a great cat that had realized its prey was trapped nearby.
He looked at her. There was something very odd about him. “Sorry, I’m out of time,” he told her.
“What are you talking about?” she asked, disturbed.
She saw his eyes again and opened her mouth to scream.
Too late.
The bats were coming. Circling overhead, then dipping low, their wings brushing her with just a touch…a terrifying touch.
Yet…
They didn’t settle, didn’t land on her, though she knew it would be a struggle to make it the short distance back to the Square.
Where there would be people. Lots of people. Police cars, maybe even mounted officers. Help.
She judged her distance.
It would be closer to walk back to the church.
She clung to the wall, sliding back to the door as quickly as she could.
She tried it.
Locked. Now it was locked. She banged at it. But no one came.
She was armed, she reminded herself.
Yeah, right. With a water pistol.
She drew it out of her bag and she took aim at the next winged creature that came her way. She held the child’s toy with both hands.
And she fired.
The thing fell to the ground with a horrible hissing sound, and there was a small explosion, a puff of smoke in the air, and then…
A pile of dust. As she stared at it, she noticed that there was a figure at the back of the alley. Standing there. Watching her.
The other bats hovered above her, so she ignored the m ysterious figure in favor of the immediate danger and began to shoot. She shot and shot, ignoring the shrill hissing and rain of dust, until she suddenly realized that she was going to run out of “ammo.”
She stopped.
The figure in the alley was still watching her.
And then she heard the low sound of chilling laughter.
Mark combed Bourbon Street first, going from bar to bar. He moved as fast as he could, his sense of fear growing greater with every second.
He’d put a call through to Canady, and he knew the cop would be out looking for her, and that he had patrolmen on the hunt, as well. He’d done everything he could conceivably do, but even so, he felt as if he were being torn apart, as if he had failed again.
He didn’t know where the hell she was.
He would find her. By God, he would find her. She was strong. Even in danger, she would be strong. She believed. She knew the truth.
Exiting a bar, he plowed straight into another man.
Jonas.
“You,” he breathed, and reached into his pocket; he couldn’t miss this time.
