It crouched above Mrs. Case, and pulled her robe away with its half-rotted hands. She mewled under the tape, and thrashed as best she could, and Jack wanted to tell her not to bother. Mrs. Case was dead. She just hadn’t caught on yet.
Pushing up her pale blue nightgown, the thing let its palm rest on Mrs. Case’s belly. It grinned, and Jack saw teeth that were black and gums that oozed rot. He couldn’t begin to guess what shape the body had been in before the passenger had climbed inside, but it was falling apart faster than an imitation handbag.
“You had to know it would be this way,” the thing told Mrs. Case. “You had to know you don’t turn your back on something like this once you’ve agreed to it.” He peeled back the tape and cocked his head. “Got anything to say for yourself, you lying whore?”
“I didn’t agree to
Mrs. Case jerked as the thing placed the knife against her stomach, screaming behind the tape, strangled and animal-like. She sounded like a pig hanging in a slaughterhouse rather than a person, and the thing laughed. “We all pay our debts, kiddo,” it said. “One way or another, blood or money, we all pay. You, me, everyone.”
Mrs. Case tried to speak through the tape, but the knife went in, and the thing drew the blade across the curve of her belly in one economical motion. Jack watched, not wanting to blink, as the thing went about its work, cutting the child from Mrs. Case and holding the slick, still body in its palms.
Mrs. Case’s eyelids fluttered, but her fingers flexed as she reached for the child. Jack gave her full credit— even hacked to bits, she was a tough bird.
The thing wiped the blood and amniotic fluids away from the baby’s mouth and nose with a ragged fingertip, and then breathed into the tiny mouth until the child wailed.
Jack reached out reflexively, but it was like being stuck in one of those dreams where you couldn’t move your own limbs. The Case baby wasn’t dead—the thing had cut it out of its mother and breathed life into it. “Why?” Jack said. “What could you possibly want with a fucking baby?”
The thing wrapped the baby in Mrs. Case’s bathrobe while it squalled, setting it almost gently on the tile floor, and then stood over Mrs. Case while she stared at it, her eyes glassy and fixed.
“Consider us squared,” it said, and then leaned down and jabbed the knife into the hollow of Mrs. Case’s throat, twisting until blood flowed in small rivers down her neck. Her body was a ruin, and she lasted not even one more sucking breath before she went still.
The thing picked up the baby, and Jack waited. He’d been prepared for a dead kid, something small that could be left in a canyon for coyotes and other scavengers to devour. He’d been prepared for the sort of thing that considered child-flesh a rarified taste, or your basic sick human bastard who got his rocks off on killing a mother and her unborn baby.
But if it was keeping the child alive, that opened up a host of worse things. There were far blacker fates for children who stayed alive in the grasp of something like this creature. Jack felt his stomach knot, even though he didn’t really have a stomach in the vision. He was at the end—the smoke was wearing off and soon he’d be back, vomiting his guts into the Cases’ kitchen sink.
He tried to follow the thing, but the cold-water feeling was still there, and every step was agony.
At the door, the thing turned back to Jack, and locked eyes with him for the first time. “I see you,” it rasped. “But you don’t see me. Not really. You don’t have any idea what I am.” It laughed, and Jack couldn’t do a damn thing. He watched the creature, with the Cases’ child, disappear back over the wall. It laughed the entire time.
The eyes were bottomless. Demons riding human bodies had glassy, flat eyes—dead man’s eyes. These were alive, horribly so, a forest fire ravaging its human shell.
A tremor went through Jack, unbidden, as he started to back himself off the vision, shut down the ebb and flow of the Black that washed across his mind, and try and make reentry into the real world.
They were just echoes, a memory that lived and breathed. The creature couldn’t see Jack any more than he could reach out and touch it, ten years past. Couldn’t. But had.
“Jack?”
Pete helped him sit up, and Jack tried to push down the wave of nausea. He’d managed to shoot smack for close to a dozen years without puking on everything. He could handle one bad trip.
“Fuck,” he said. His head was throbbing like a skinhead had taken a brick to it, and his upper lip was slick with cooled blood. The echos still vibrated in the Case house, like listening to faraway klaxons.
“You all right?” Pete handed him a wad of paper towels, and Jack shoved it under his nose.
“’M fine.” It came out muffled. His tongue was thick and dry from inhaling the smoke, and his chest felt like he had sucked down a tongue of flame.
“You’re a blood-coated mess, is what you are,” Pete said. She dumped the herbs from the pot into the sink and ran water on them.
“I’m a blood-coated mess who saw some real interesting stuff while he was under,” Jack said. The sky outside was creeping toward pink-gray, and he rubbed his face. “How long was I under?”
“A while,” Pete said. “I think we should go. Been here long enough to make people suspicious.”
Jack collected his kit and shoved it back into his sack, then followed Pete out the front door. On the sidewalk, a female jogger wearing tight hot pink leggings slowed down to stare at them. Jack nodded and flashed her a smile. “Morning, luv.”
She didn’t return it, but she sped up again and didn’t reach for her mobile to call the police down on the freakish British axe murderer squatting in the vacant mansion next door.
Jack watched her pert pink ass bounce away around the corner, and then tossed his kit into the back seat of the Fury. “Can we get some breakfast? I’m knackered.”
“Yeah, and I’m constantly starved,” Pete said. “Always thought that eating for two was crap, but I’d lick the paint off the bloody car, at the moment.”
They drove south along the 405 freeway. Traffic was already packed in, but it moved, and Pete jumped off near Venice. Jack saw the black sport utility vehicle come behind them, neither too close nor too far away, lights off even though it was barely light enough to read street signs.
“Pete,” he said, and pointed into his side mirror.
“Yeah,” she said after a moment. “I see ’em.”
The van followed them through a pair of turns and onto Venice Beach Boulevard, the only light coming from a coffee stand. Nobody was on the street except for dozing bums. No witnesses to bother whoever was following them around.
“All right,” Pete said. “Hold on.” She jerked the wheel and the Fury fishtailed onto a side street, laying a thick strip of rubber.
Jack slammed against the passenger door. The handle caught him sharply in the ribs, and he grabbed it to avoid being tossed around like a doll.
The SUV came screeching after them, and Pete cursed. “They know what they’re doing. And I don’t know these fucking streets.”
In London, Pete would be able to lose a tail, either in the maze of pre-automobile streets in the city center or in the myriad one-way roads of Hampstead. Here, though, she wasn’t able to shake the black car. Jack winced as the Fury nipped a curb, undercarriage scraping.
“Slow down up here,” he said, as Pete steered them into a back alley behind a row of bungalows. She gripped the wheel, knuckles pale.
“What are you going to do?”
“Just don’t worry about me,” Jack told her. “I’ll be fine.”
“Jack…” she started, but he shoved open the door and dropped out, pavement rushing up.
The trick was to let yourself fall—ball up your head to protect it, and let yourself go limp. Your body will absorb the impact. You tense up, you try to fight the falling, and you’ll break, smash your bones against the pavement, and end up roadkill.
Jack tucked his head down, gravel and shards of broken bottles raking his arms, and rolled to a stop amid a collection of bins. The SUV jerked to a stop, and a pair of legs emerged. Jack stayed where he was, letting his heart
