Coven

Another mentioned burying bodies. But none of that mattered to Czanek now. He could only stare unbelieving at the fourth and final notation:

4) Kill Czanek.

Czanek’s eyes jittered. They knew about him, but how? Had Jervis squealed? There was no reason, and there was no reason for the dean to turn on him either. Had Winnifred hired her own dick to watch her back? Had Czanek actually been made?

Then the thought toppled like rubble.

The bug.

Holy fucking shit! he thought. The bug!

His gloved hand ran under the inside lip of the desk front. The bug he’d come here to replace wasn’t there.

I am in some shit, he thought very slowly.

“Looking for this, Mr. Czanek?”

Czanek ducked, doused his light, and pulled the Charter snub from his ankle holster. The desk lamp flicked on. Some husky kid in a T shirt and jeans faced him from the desk. Between the kid’s fingers was Czanek’s tiny 49 MHz transmitter.

“I found the other ones too,” the kid said. His face was pale. He was smiling. “The ones in Besser’s house and Winnie’s office.”

“Don’t move,” Czanek said. “I gotta think.”

“What’s to think? You’re caught.”

Czanek cocked his piece. “Who the fuck are you?”

“The name’s Tom. I used to be a student, but now I’m a…guess you’d call me a myrmidon. Ever read Lovecraft?” Tom’s smile stretched to hideous thinness. “I’m a haunter of the dark.”

“You’re gonna be the haunter of the morgue if you don’t start talking. You’re a paid tail, like me. You work for the dean’s wife, don’t you?”

Tom laughed huskily. “That horny sleaze? No way. She doesn’t even like me—she calls me ‘the thing.’ I’ll bet she masturbates fifteen times a day. She’ll do it right in front of you, she doesn’t care. She can’t help herself. It’s the influence of the labyrinth.”

“Who do you work for!” Czanek demanded.

“I work for the Supremate.”

There was that word again. Supremate. Probably a gang leader. The kid must be burned out on dust; he was no P.I. “Who tipped you about the bugs I planted? Was it Jervis? The dean? Who?”

“It was the sisters,” Tom explained. “They work for the Supremate too. They’re his daughters, his children.”

The kid was flaked. What good would killing him do? These sisters, whoever they were, must know about Czanek too, along with Besser and Winnie. If I kill the kid, I gotta kill them all.

“You were in the wrong place at the wrong time, Mr. Czanek.”

Too much was going on at once; Czanek couldn’t think. Like how did the kid get into the office? It had been empty, Czanek was sure of that. And he was sure he’d locked the door behind him.

“All right,” Czanek said. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You and me are going to walk out that door, nice and easy like, and then we’re going for a little ride.”

“Wrong,” Tom said. Suddenly he had something huge in his hands. It looked like a long, wide bladed ax. “You’re gonna stand there like a good little boy while I put this through your head. Nice and easy like. Then I’m going to bury you.”

Now even Czanek spared a laugh. “Where were you when the brains were handed out? I’ve got a gun. See?”

“I don’t mind loud noises,” Tom said. “You can go hard or easy. Your choice, man.”

It had to be drugs, PCP or something. There was all kinds of shit on the street that made you stone crazy and fearless as a sewer rat. But Czanek couldn’t stand here all night. He had to make his move now. “I’m not fooling around here. If you don’t drop that ax, I’m going to have to kill you.”

“Oh, it’s not an ax,” Tom obliged. “It’s called a beam hewer. Colonial guys used them to cut rafters and shit. And it’ll do a job on a human head too. You should’ve seen Sladder.”

Jesus, Czanek realized. I’m gonna have to pop this guy.

The blade’s edge glittered. The pitch of Tom’s voice rumbled down. “Sorry, Mr. Czanek. I’m afraid your time is up.”

Czanek shouted “Don’t!” as Tom, the Achillean myrmidon, the haunter of the dark, raised the hewer high above his head.

Czanek emptied the Charter in five evenly spaced taps. The impact of the slugs mowed the kid down like a hinged duck in a shooting gallery.

Czanek stood in grainy, hot silence. Gun smoke stung his eyes. Unaffected, he stared down at the dead boy.

Then the dead boy got up.

Tom’s smile never wavered. His clean white T shirt bore no evidence of blood, just gritty black powder marks. The grouped slugs had punched a smoking hole in the middle of his chest. It was a deep hole.

“Don’t worry,” Tom said. “I won’t charge you for the shirt.”

Again, Czanek thought: I am in some shit.

The empty piece fell out of his hand when the girl entered the room. There was a strange, resonant hum, and a shrinking line of light that was black.

But the girl was just a child. She stood caped in black, a white face in the room’s dark. Her gentle aura filled Czanek’s head.

—Hurry up, Tom! We want to eat, please!

“Coming right up,” Tom said.

The massive hewer’s blade blurred down. The sister smiled. Tom’s new gift of strength made Besser’s job on Sladder look like child’s play: Czanek was shorn completely in half, from head to crotch. Between his feet, the blade struck the floor with such force that the entire building tremored.

Czanek’s body parted and fell in two cleanly cut pieces.

—

CHAPTER 18

Lydia remembered feeling afraid. She felt naive, puerile, inexperienced. She was an adult, a sexually mature woman, yet she felt like a child. The very next thing she knew, she was in the shower with him. That was the only word: afraid. But it wasn’t Wade she was afraid of, nor sex, nor closeness. It was herself.

The cool water rained down on her face. Wade stood behind her, sudsing her into a suit of slick lather. He did so very slowly. Lydia’s excitement began to unravel the instant his hands touched her skin. She’d forgotten what that felt like, to simply be touched…

Neither had said a word since they’d come into the shower. Lydia liked it that way—no talk, just the detailed hiss of the water and the sensation of his hands sudsing her body, beguiling her. This was a shocking luxury—being washed in the dreamy torrent, being so slowly and attentively felt. The contrast of warm lather and cool water made her nipples stand right up, right away. She was happy to feel, against her rump, that something of his was standing up too. Now his hands smoothed suds over her breasts. The slow, radiating pleasure was almost infuriating. He pressed her breasts together, offered them to the water. The suds sluiced off and left her flesh squeaky in his hands.

She felt the trail of suds course down her legs. More and more, Lydia felt thinly wired, like a rosined bowstring fit to snap. Wade’s hands slid up her hips; then the bar of soap glided brazenly into the cleft of her rump. The shock brought her up on her tiptoes.

Wade seemed to know that she could bear no more of this. He hugged her as he turned off the water, then