Cry Havoc

making a mountain out of a molehill.'

'Oh, really?' Frank said, nodding. 'Is that what I'm doing?'

'Well, look at you.'

Frank didn't want to look at herself. She wanted to get the hell out of there and go home. And fuck the peanut butter and milk— she was headed straight for the Scotch bottle. She gathered her work clothes, refilling the pockets with what she'd emptied onto the kitchen table.

Gail watched her, finally muttering, 'You are being such an asshole.'

'Then I guess you'll be happy when I'm gone,' Frank answered, yanking at the door and slamming it shut behind her.

Frank was making love to Gail but Marguerite was in her head. Marguerite, naked and dancing, her huge breasts unbound, pushing into Franks face. Franks desire grew like rage. She felt starved for Gail and bit at her neck. The doc cried out, on one side or the other of the thin line between pain and passion. Frank didn't care which. She followed the exquisite hunger, steering Gail backwards toward her darkened bedroom. She chewed at Gail's neck, dragging her lover into the dark, like a lion dragging a gazelle into its lair.

Through the red haze of desire, Frank saw candles burning. Someone was beating a drum. Then she was dancing around a fire with a billion stars in her hair. She was naked and Marguerite was naked and the Mother was there, all of them dancing around the fire. Around and around they paraded, and Frank's hunger grew and swelled, roiling and crashing like waves pounding a sea. The Aegean sea at midnight. Fire on the shore. Women dancing under an ageless moon. Drums pounding in their heads like blood.

As happens in dreams, Frank was suddenly clothed, and she pulled the 9mm from under her jacket. Its grip was comforting. She trained the sight on the Mother. Fired. Again and again, but the Mother only laughed. She wouldn't go down. The bullets didn't even seem to hit her. Frank was a good shot and she was close. She couldn't have missed. How could she not be killing the Mother?

She trained the gun on herself, staring down the barrel.

'Go ahead,' the Mother laughed. 'Pull the trigger.'

Marguerite kept dancing, a thousand secrets smiling from her eyes.

'You always have a choice,' she shrugged.

Frank's finger was squeezing the trigger. She was afraid she was going to fire but she couldn't turn the gun around. She couldn't move it and her finger was getting tighter and tighter on the trigger.

She woke up screaming, 'Drop the gun! Drop the gun!”

Frank rolled off the couch. She was up in an instant, looking for the Beretta, waiting to see the Mother holding it on her. There was nothing. Just the familiar reality of her den. Frank's head pounded and the overhead light hurt her eyes. But she didn't want to turn it off.

She stumbled to the bathroom, disgusted with the nightmare sweat sticking to her skin. She couldn't get into the shower fast enough. Not for the first time that night she wondered what the fuck was wrong with her.

She remembered storming out of Gail's, amazed at the pique she'd gotten into. She'd felt pretty stupid by the time she got home, but still angry. A couple stiff shots brought her down. She paced and drank, trying to figure out if she was just stressed like Gail said, or going postal, or something else. It was the something else that Frank had done a dark tango with all night. While not appealing, going nuts didn't seem nearly as frightening as Marguerite's postulation that the Mother was fucking with her head.

Frank stood in the shower, thinking that when you put all the weird events together, it made sense. As much as any of this could make sense. She'd had baby deja vus before—she couldn't remember where or what about, but Frank had recognized the feeling when it happened at the Mother's. It had been a little odd and kind of disconcerting, but she'd forgotten about it. Then it happened again, twice, when the dog bit her. The deja vu about the dog attack had been wildly clear. Frank hadn't been able to dismiss that so lightly, nor the freaky vision of the Mother standing in pools of blood. That had been slightly less real, but just as uncomfortable. Then it had happened again at the church and last night at Gail's. That last one was the granddaddy of the deja vus, more powerful and absolutely real.

Realizing the visions were getting stronger, she shivered in the hot water. She turned it off, and put on her robe, even though she was still wet. Frank connected the dots, starting with the little deja vu in the Mother's office, then the dog. No, she corrected, then she'd seen that thing in rags, right after the first deja vu, right after she'd left the Mother's.

Frank had never seen this bum before, then all of a sudden the fucking thing's everywhere, even seeming to follow her. But that was impossible, right? As impossible as its being able to see out of those ruined eyes or let itself out of a locked interrogation box. (Frank had subsequently quizzed the entire station house—no one except Darcy had even admitted to seeing the relic).

There was the dream, too, with the relic and the soldier. That hadn't been as intense as the deja vus, but it had been awfully realistic. Familiar, was the word. Like Frank intimately knew that soldier in the carnage. Then the dog mauled her, a red dog, just like the Mother said. Coincidence? Possibly. As coincidental as anything else. But how coincidental was the timing of the events, and their growing frequency and intensity?

Frank wandered into the kitchen. She made coffee even though she'd rather have a drink. She rationalized that despite it being Saturday and despite that she wasn't on call, only drunks drank first thing in the morning. She might be going crazy, but she wasn't a drunk. Throwing away yesterday's coffee grounds, she saw Marguerite James's business card lying on top of the garbage like a little white surrender flag.

Frank took it out and put it on the counter. She ignored it until after she got the coffee brewing, then she smoothed the crumpled card against the tiles. It was barely five AM, but Frank grabbed the phone. If she didn't do it now she never would.

'It's Lieutenant Franco. Look, I'm sorry to wake you but I have to ask you something.'

Marguerite had answered sleepily, but she sounded fully alert when she answered, 'Yes?'

Frank sucked in a deep breath and told Marguerite everything. The deja vus, the thing in rags, the dog, the dreams—everything.

'What the hell does it all mean?'

'I'm not sure,' Marguerite came back. Frank thought Marguerite was hedging until she said, 'For want of a better explanation, I'd liken it to a psychic awakening.'

'What the fuck does that mean?' Frank asked in another abnormal burst of impatience.

'Lieutenant. It's five-fifteen in the morning. I don't care to be sworn at.'

'I'm sorry,' Frank gritted out. 'This is a little new to me.'

'Of course it is.'

Marguerite sounded strong and reassuring.

'Basically, whether you believe it or not, Mother Love has awakened an innate psychic ability within you. At an instinctual level, you are aware of the threat she represents to you. Your psyche is trying to defend you, regardless of your lack of belief in her abilities and your ignorance of your own.'

Bullshit, Frank wanted to say and hang up, but she'd made the call and she'd tough it out.

'What am I defending myself against?'

'Her intentions. That's the black pall I feel around you. Thoughts are energy, Lieutenant. Intentions are energy. Subtle yes, but effective in quantity and over time. And especially damaging when the source is able to focus her will and concentration as effectively as this woman apparently can.'

'But why me?' Frank interrupted. 'There are two other cops working this case. Why isn't she attacking them?'

Or maybe she is, Frank thought and they're not spilling. Impossible. She knew her cops too well. If this shit was going down on them, Noah would be the first in line to bitch about it and Frank was sure Lewis wouldn't be far behind.

'You there?'

'Yes. Bear with me.'

Frank held on, wondering what the hell Marguerite was doing.

'I don't think this is about your work. Maybe inadvertently it is, but this . . . malice I feel around you, is much older than any case you're working on. It feels extremely old. It has an