“We’re waiting for our bro’ Sam.” Dave called her attention back by tugging at a loose locket of her hair. “We’re gonna trip.”
“Trip?” Cawood took a long sip of her drink, turning her back to the bar so she could see both men. “Where are you going?”
“Ah fuck,” Raul said, his eyes wide and pupils dilated. “Trains already left baby.”
“Hey sister.” Dave grabbed Cawood’s free hand. “What’s your name?”
“Call me Karrie.” Cawood smelled his cologne as she shouted her name.
“Here’s your ticket. Karrie.” He placed a small colored capsule in her hand.
Cawood looked at it, then up into Dave’s dark eyes. “What is it?”
“Fucking Salvation Baby.” He laughed showing all of his teeth.
“Salvation.” She held the capsule up in the weird light. “I need Salvation!” Cawood tipped her head back and dropped the capsule in. It tasted like nothing, but she washed it down with a splash of her drink. She looked at her companions. They slapped each other’s palms laughing. “Salvation!” Cawood felt Raul’s hand slide over her hips and pause over her tailbone.
“You’re fucking beautiful, Karrie,” he said, his breath garlicky with chemical traces.
“You’re not!” She laughed, and then kissed him wetly.
Raul looked up at Dave and the pair shared a secret smile. Cawood watched the writhing bodies on the dance floor as she waited for the drug to kick in.
16 – The Hit
Balg’s key opened the apartment door without a sound. Felon moved in quickly, quietly locked the door behind him. He hurried cautiously through the living room. It was late 20th Century female. The walls were pink, the carpets red. Victorian era remake chairs and chesterfield gathered around a maple wood coffee table on a dark Indian throw rug. Magazines fanned out across the table’s shiny surface. Plaque-mounted prints hung on the walls. Felon hated it at first glance. Fucking women.
His eyes scanned for and found the fire escape’s black iron silhouette at the end of a hallway that brought him to the bedroom and bath. A feathered spirit catcher hung in the window that opened onto it. To his left, he passed a small kitchenette with tiny breakfast nook, stove and fridge. The apartment was small, well maintained, and intended for a single occupant.
He opened the bedroom door on silent hinges. The bed had a floral-patterned comforter in place and a pair of pillows in lace-trimmed covers. He closed the door behind him. Balg’s envelope had contained a photo of the woman: a redhead, five-foot-six, athletic build and chestnut eyes. The photo had been snapped as she climbed from a car, unaware. Chrissy Morgan had a candid carnal look that vaguely stirred something in Felon. The combination of apparent youthful innocence and sexuality started to explain the Demon’s interest in her. The bio completed it.
Age: 27 (Pre-Change), Occupation: Secretary for City Phone Company. She worked from 8:30 to 4:30. Arrived home after a workout at Silver’s Gym at approximately 7:45 p.m. if she didn’t eat out with friends, 9:30 if she did. The file said she was meeting someone from work at the gym at seven-thirty. She’d be home after that.
Morgan was a member of the New Life Group-an organization that sprang up fifty years after the Change promoting a New Life in a New Age through temperance, nutrition and exercise. Its founders believed the regimen encouraged the growth of latent powers in the mind. Felon thought it was a waste of discipline. Chrissy went to bed early and got up early. She was Demon bait.
The assassin glanced at his watch: nine o’clock. It was early, but success depended on the element of surprise. He looked around the bedroom and walked to the closet. Folding lattice doors: perfect. Felon could set up his hunter’s blind behind them. He stretched, took a deep breath to relax his body before entering, and then pulled the closet doors shut after him. He settled himself cross-legged behind perfumed dresses and suits. He pulled his gun from its holster, checked the silencer and laid it in his lap. He waited.
The Incubus would be dangerous. The assassin had long ago learned to shape innate fears into reflexive defenses-so much so that he had almost lost the ability to flinch or be surprised. And his life, his individuality became irrelevant when he started killing. The storm of concentrated fury protected him like razor wire.
Felon heard the door click. A muffled voice followed, a woman’s humming a formless tune. There were thumps and bangs of a briefcase dropping and shoes being kicked off. Then he heard the quiet rustling of a nylon rain jacket falling to the floor or over a chair. Felon lost sound of her, until he heard clicking, a beep, and then garbled monotones as she listened to her phone messages. He’d seen the ancient reel-to-reel by the door. A long beep, and more clicks. There followed a rushing of water and more humming. Then the bedroom door opened. A dim light flicked on. Felon’s hand reflexively tightened its grip on the gun. He watched her through the slats, moving rapidly toward the closet. She flung the doors wide.
The assassin was hidden behind the long dresses and coats. His pulse raced when he smelled her perfume, and the breeze from her movements touched the hair on the back of his hands. She was dressed in a pair of tight black leggings and tunic. He couldn’t see her face, but he had glimpsed it as she approached the closet. It was Morgan.
With quick motions her tunic was a tangle on the carpet and her tights were down and off. Felon’s position allowed a detailed view of her taut buttocks as she walked away; but he blinked his eyes mechanically, the thought of killing more important than arousal. She slipped into her bathrobe and left the bedroom. Faintly, he could smell the woman’s scent rising from the tangle of clothes on the floor an arm’s reach from him. He raked the gun across his ribs to keep his focus.
When the Incubus was engaged, Felon would stand and fire. He had four clips in his coat pockets, two in easy reach thrust through his belt. Felon’s heartbeat surged at the thought of the kill. Stahn might have any number of tricks up his sleeves, but a low-level Demon like an Incubus was unlikely to waste energy transubstantiating a weapon from the Infernal places. Balg said it took too much power.
Felon looked up as the woman re-entered the room in her bathrobe. She hooked it on the back of the bedroom door and strode naked to her bed, lit the lamp beside it before returning to the entrance and turning off the overhead light. When she walked into the bathroom, Felon studied the kill zone. The Demon would appear somewhere near the bed. That was the only certainty. The assassin’s blind had a clear line of sight. He would wait for Stahn to begin his work.
Morgan returned wiping her lips with a towel.
“I’ve got to sleep tonight,” she muttered, dropping onto the bed while lifting an electric alarm clock to set it. Distantly, Felon smelled peppermint. The woman chuckled, threw back the covers and climbed under them. Her pale hand reached out, and clicked off the lamp. Darkness settled. Out in the living room a light had been left on causing a rectangular slash of dim yellow to cut a section from her bedroom carpet.
Felon focused on his gun. He felt its weight, its shape. He studied the dimpled surface of its grip. The assassin located each of its clips with his mind, weighed them, measured them, imagined the precise hand actions required to eject and load. He imagined these mechanical actions until the gun oil was strong in his nostrils. Minutes passed uncounted.
Felon was brought from his meditative state by a gasp-slight, instantaneous-the sudden intake of air a person makes touching a toe to cold water. He opened his eyes. The bed covers, top sheet and all, had floated up toward the ceiling. Chrissy Morgan’s well-exercised body lay asleep, naked and exposed. She reacted to the chill by turning on her side and drawing both knees to her chest. Worried little sounds came from her.
The covers were suspended in the air as if invisible wires held all four corners. They hovered a second before spinning away to land in a heap by the door. Felon heard snuffling, lapping noises now, wet and bestial. But in the half-light from the doorway, he could not see any physical reason for it.
Stahn was still intangible, but he was beginning his work. Morgan’s legs suddenly flexed outward as though stretching, and then faintly, Felon saw the outline of a hand like it was drawn in chalk on an invisible screen. A large human-like hand slid out of the darkness, and then another. Both were sketched at first, but grew in detail. Each hand grabbed an ankle, and pulled the legs apart. The darkness between her thighs was thrust upward as her hips turned.
