Her puzzlement was turning to a mild alarm, but now that he’d started, Nicky was determined to tell it all through, right to the end. “What,” she began.
“What I do,” he said, interrupting her, “is hunt them down.”
The song by 10,000 Maniacs ended and the boom box’s speakers offered up another to the fading day. Nicky couldn’t name the band this time, but he was familiar with the song’s punchy rhythm. The lead singer was talking about burning beds ....
Beside the machine, Luann put down her book and stretched.
Do it, Nicky thought. Get out of here. Now. While you still can.
Instead, she lay down on the blanket, hands behind her head, and looked up into the darkening sky, listening to the music. Maybe she was looking for the first star of the night.
Something to wish upon.
The fire burned in her brighter than any star. Flaring and ebbing to the pulse of her thoughts.
Calling to the freaks.
Nicky’s fingers clenched into fists. He made himself look away. But even closing his eyes, he couldn’t ignore the fire. Its heat sparked the distance between them as though he lay beside her on the blanket, skin pressed to skin. His pulse drummed, twinning her heartbeat.
This was how the freaks felt. This was what they wanted, what they hungered for, what they fed on.
This was what he denied them. The spark of life.
The sacred fire.
He couldn’t look away any longer. He had to see her one more time, her fire burning, burning ...
He opened his eyes to find that the twilight had finally found Fitzhenry Park. And Luann—she was blazing like a bonfire in its dusky shadows.
“What do you mean, you hunt them down?” she asked. “I kill them,” Nicky told her.
“But—”
“Understand, they’re not human. They just
He touched his borrowed shirt as he spoke. She just stared at him—all trace of that earlier smile gone. Fear lived in her eyes now.
That’s it, he told himself. You’ve done enough. Get out of here.
But once started, he didn’t seem to be able to stop. All the lonely years of the endless hunt came spilling out of him.
“They’re out there in the night,” he said. “That’s when they can get away with moving among us.
When their shambling walk makes you think of drunks or some feeble old homeless bag lady—not of monsters. They’re freaks and they live on the fire that makes us human.”
“The ... the fire ... ?
He touched his chest.
“The one in here,” he said. “They’re drawn to the ones whose fires burn the brightest,” he added.
“Like yours does.”
She edged her chair back from the table, ready to bolt. Then he saw her realize that there was no place to bolt to. The knowledge sat there in her eyes, fanning the fear into an evermore debilitating panic. Where was she going to go that he couldn’t get to her first?
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “If someone had come to me with this story before I ... found out about them—”
(“Momma! Daddy!” he could hear his daughter crying. “The monsters are coming for me!”
Soothing her. Showing her that the closet was empty. But never thinking about the window and the fire escape outside it. Never thinking for a minute that the freaks would come in through the window and take them both when he was at work.
But that was before he’d known about the freaks, wasn’t it?)
He looked down at the table and cleared his throat. There was pain in his eyes when his gaze lifted to meet hers again—pain as intense as her fear.
“If someone had told me,” he went on, “I’d have recommended him for the Zeb, too—just lock him up in a padded cell and throw away the key. But I don’t think that way now. Because I can see them. I can recognize them. All it takes is one time and you’ll never disbelieve again.
“And you’ll never forget.”
“You ... you just kill these people ... ?” she asked.
Her voice was tiny—no more than a whisper. Her mind was tape looped around the one fact. She wasn’t hearing anything else.
“I told you—they’re not people,” he began, then shook his head.
What was the point? What had he thought was going to happen? She’d go, yeah, right, and jump in to help him? Here, honey, let me hold the stake. Would you like another garlic clove in your lunch?
But they weren’t vampires. He didn’t know what they were, just that they were dangerous.
Freaks.
“They know about me,” he said. “They’ve been hunting me for as long as I’ve been hunting them, but I move too fast for them. One day, though, I’ll make a mistake and then they’ll have me. It’s that, or the cops’ll pick me up and I wouldn’t last the night in a cell. The freaks’d be on me so fast ...”
He let his voice trail off Her lower lip was trembling. Her eyes looked like those of some small panicked creature, caught in a trap, the hunter almost upon her.
“Maybe I should go,” he said.
He rose from the table, pretending he didn’t see the astonished relief in her eyes. He paused at the door that would let him out onto the balcony.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said.
“I ... you ...”
He shook his head. “I should never have come.”
She still couldn’t string two words together. Still didn’t believe that she was getting out of this alive.
He felt bad for unsettling her the way he had, but maybe it was for the best. Maybe she wouldn’t bring any more strays home the way she had him. Maybe the freaks’d never get to her.
“Just think about this,” he said, before he left. “What if I’m right?”
Then he stepped outside and closed the door behind him.
He could move fast when he had to—it was what had kept him alive through all these years. By the time she reached her living room window, he was down the stairs and across the street, looking back at her from the darkened mouth of an alleyway nestled between a yuppie restaurant and a bookstore, both of which were closed. He could see her, studying the street, looking for him.
But she couldn’t see him.
And that was the way he’d keep it.
He came out of the bushes, the mask of his face shifting and unsettled in the poor light. Luann was sitting up, fiddling with the dial on her boom box, flipping through the channels. She didn’t hear him until he was almost upon her. When she turned, her face drained of color. She sprawled backwards in her attempt to escape and then could only lie there and stare, mouth working, but no sound coming out. He lunged for her
But then Nicky was there. The hunting knife that he carried in a sheath under his shirt was in his hand, cutting edge up. He grabbed the freak by the back of his collar and hauled him around. Before the freak could make a move, Nicky rammed the knife home in the freak’s stomach and ripped it up. Blood sprayed, showering them both.
He could hear Luann screaming. He could feel the freak jerking in his grip as he died. He could taste the freak’s blood on his lips. But his mind was years and miles away, falling back and back to a small apartment where his wife and daughter had fallen prey to the monsters his daughter told him were living in the closet ....
The freak slipped from his grip and sprawled on the grass. The knife fell from Nicky’s hand. He looked at Luann, finally focusing on her. She was on her knees, staring at him and the freak like they were both aliens.
“He ... his face ... he ...”
She could barely speak.
