Incubi

The throbbing lights afar caught his eye. Red and blue. Don’t think about it anymore, he pleaded with himself. Just…don’t…think about it.

The high-rises stood like an arrangement of gravestones. In the center lot a pair of county cruisers sat nose- to-nose. One cop stood smoking, staring off. Another was down on one knee with forehead in hand. The red light on an EMT truck throbbed like a heartbeat.

“Put the fucking butt out and put it in your pocket,” Jack said. “This is a crime scene. And tuck in your shirt.”

“Yes, sir,” the cop said. His eyes looked flat.

“Evidence here yet?”

“Upstairs and out back. We’re still waiting on the M.E.”

Jack pointed to the cop on one knee. “What’s his problem?”

“See for yourself. Fifth floor. Lieutenant Eliot’s there.”

“Any press people show up, tell them it’s a domestic. And get yourselves squared away. You’re cops, not garbage men.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jack stalked toward the high-rise. He was one to talk: long hair, ragman clothes, unshaven. Uniforms hated brass. You usually had to be a prick to get anything out of them. But these two guys looked like they just seen a ghost. Maybe they have, Jack thought. He stepped off the elevator onto the fifth floor and headed down the hall.

The familiar scent touched him at once. Faint. Cloying.

Fresh blood.

Randy Eliot leaned off the wall. He always wore good clothes, like a TV detective. But tonight the face didn’t match the fine, tailored suit. Randy Eliot’s face looked cracked.

“You’ve never seen anything like it,” was all he said.

“Who reported it?” Jack inquired.

“Old guy in the next unit. Said he heard whining, and some ruckus. The super unlocked the door for us.”

Jack looked at the doorframe. The safety chain was broken.

“That’s right,” Randy confirmed. “Locked from the inside. We broke it to get in. The perp went out the back slider.”

Jack eyed the chain, then Randy. “But we’re five stories up.”

“The perp must’ve rappelled down. He left through the slider, over the balcony. That’s all I know.”

The apartment was quaint, uncluttered. It made him think of Veronica and then he knew why. Framed pictures hung all over the walls — pastels and watercolors, originals. An artist, Jack realized. A lot of the pictures looked first-rate.

Flashes popped down the short hall. A tech was fuming the handle of the slider, squinting over a Sirchie UV light. He said nothing as Jack stepped onto the balcony.

Five goddamn stories, he thought, peering over the rail. Two more techs mounted field spots below, to check for impressions in the wet ground. It had rained all afternoon. The perp had either worked his way down terrace to terrace or had used a rope and somehow unhooked it afterward. Jack tried to visualize this but drew only shifting blanks.

Randy took him back through the unit. The place had “the feel.” Any bad 64 had it, the mystic backwash of atmosphere projected into the investigator’s perceptions. Its tightness rose in Jack’s gut; he felt something like static on his skin. He knew it before he even saw it. The feel was all over the place.

“In there,” Randy said. “I’ll wait if you don’t mind.”

Another stone-faced tech in red overalls was shooting the bedroom with a modified Nikon F. The flash snapped like lightning. New blood swam in the air, and a strangely clean redolence. Death in here, the feel itched in Jack’s head. Come on in.

Jack stepped into the bedroom.

“Aw, Christ,” he croaked.

He felt nailed to the wall. The blood shouted at him, bellowed in his face. It was everywhere. He blinked with each pop of the tech’s flash, and the image seemed to lurch closer. The bed looked drenched, sodden as a sponge in a pail of red paint. This was more than murder, it was a fete. Red shapes, like slashes, adorned the clean white walls. Some looked like words, others like symbols.

Above the headboard, four words stood out:

HERE IS MY LOVE

Love, Jack mused. In slow horror, his eyes moved to the bed.

White rope fastened her wrists and ankles to the posts. She was blindfolded with tape, and gagged — of course, the whining heard by the neighbor. Again, Jack tried to picture the killer, but his instincts, oddly, did not show him a psychopath. Jack could tell the victim had been pretty. The perp had very tenderly gutted her; he’d taken his time. Organs had been teased, caressed, reveled in for their warmth. Ropes of entrails had been reeled out of her sliced gut and adorned about the body like garlands. Her cheeks had been kissed by scarlet lips. Scarlet handprints lingered on her breasts. The epitaph proved the truth: This was not murder. It was an act of love.

Jack swallowed something hard. “Any prints?”

“Plenty,” the tech said. “The guy didn’t wear gloves. Lots of ridges on her hooters, and in the stuff he wrote on the walls.”

“Anything else?”

“Some pubes, definitely not hers. We’ll know more once Beck signs her off and gets her into the shop.”

Randy stood at the door, looking away. “She was single, lived alone. Cash in her wallet, bunch of jewelry in the drawers, all untouched. The guy next door says he thinks he heard them enter, three-fifteen or so. The whining sopped about three-thirty.”

“That’s it?”

“’Fraid so for now. Might as well let TSD take it from here.”

Jack nodded. He felt dizzy and sick. In his mind all he could see was the girl twitching against her bonds as the blade divided her abdominal wall. He saw the red hands on her breasts, the red lips kissing her.

Randy pointed to the back wall. “Check that shit out.”

Jack hadn’t even noticed it, too caught up in what lay on the drenched bed. More strange writing emblazoned the white wall, and another design.

“What the fuck is it?”

It was a triangle painted in blood, with a scarlet star drawn at each of its three points.

Written below the design was a single word:

AORISTA

Chapter 3

“I wonder what Khoronos is like in bed,” Ginny reflected.

Veronica glanced up from her packing.

“Jealous already?”

“Shut up,” Veronica said.

Ginny laughed. “I got invited first, you know. But I’ve always been one to share with my friends.”

“You’re making some pretty big plans, aren’t you? We haven’t even left yet. Besides, for all we know, he’s married.”

“Don’t even think such a disgusting thing!”

Veronica had confirmed her reservation by the number on the card. A woman, who must’ve been Khoronos’ secretary, had curtly given her directions. She and Ginny decided to drive up together.