Michael spent the day wandering around Hollywood, hoping to pick up even the smallest of vibrations, but the world around him was chaotic and he couldn’t hear a thing.
He’d gone back to the coffeehouse, and the Greyhound station, walked along Hollywood Boulevard, the Sunset Strip and several streets in between, but Jenna was nowhere to be found.
He wondered if this new skin of his was making it difficult to hear her song. But that seemed unlikely, and its sudden absence made him doubt himself.
Had he been wrong about her all along?
Had he let his desire overtake his reason? His senses?
He was, after all, directly related to Belial, and she was the queen of such behavior.
But no. He didn’t think he was wrong.
In fact, he
At least he hoped he would.
Because time was running out.
It was late in the day when he finally got his wish.
The moment the sound wafted through him, he felt a relief so intense it made his legs tremble. An odd reaction, certainly, but he wrote it off to the continuing struggle to get mind and body to work in harmony. Breaking in a new host was akin to a transplant patient adapting to a donated kidney.
Or maybe it was the other way around.
Whatever the case, Michael knew it would take time to fully adapt, and unexpected physical sensations were part of the territory.
But none of that really mattered.
He could hear Jenna’s song-as clear as can be-and all he cared about right now was that she was safe.
Following the sound, he moved up Hollywood Boulevard and found himself standing across the street from the Rocket Bar amp; Grill, a modern take on an old fifties diner. She was right there in the front window, sitting at a booth with another young girl-one he recognized from the shelter-and they were laughing together like old friends.
As Jenna sucked down the last of her Coke, the other girl dug through her purse for a few dollar bills and lay them on the table. Michael had no idea how the girl had managed to get the money, but the hardness of her face suggested the worst, and he hoped he was wrong.
Before he could give it much thought, however, a battered blue Chevy Malibu pulled to a stop out front and honked its horn. Jenna’s new friend looked out the window and smiled, waving to the car as they both got to their feet and went to the door.
Michael’s gaze shifted to the driver, a young punk of about twenty. He was trying to decide whether the guy was a drudge, when the punk moved his head and the person sitting next to him came into view:
The sight of him sent a chill through Michael. He wasn’t sure how Zack had approached Jenna, but had a feeling he was using the other girl as a proxy. Someone to convince Jenna that, despite what the woman at the shelter had told her, Zack was actually a pretty good guy.
Michael didn’t know if the friend herself was a drudge, but at this point it didn’t make much difference. Contact had been made and from the look on Jenna’s face as she stepped out of the diner’s front door, the ploy had worked. She was smiling as if she and Zack had known each other for decades.
Zack climbed out of the car then, throwing the rear door open as the girlfriend got in front and Zack gestured for Jenna to hop in back.
Michael knew he had to stop her.
Couldn’t let her get into that car.
And at this point, there was only one way to do it.
“Jenna!” he called, waving a hand, his voice nearly drowned out by the traffic streaking by.
She didn’t hear him.
“Jenna!” he called out again, and this time Zack looked up sharply, staring at him with quizzical eyes.
Michael needed to get over there. Now. But when he tried a jump, his body resisted. It wasn’t yet ready for lateral travel.
He’d have to do this the old-fashioned way.
Reaching under his jacket, he jerked his Glock free and headed across the street. Zack saw him coming and despite the change in appearance seemed to know exactly who he was.
Grabbing hold of Jenna’s hand, he hurried her into the car and climbed in after her, closing them inside.
“Jenna!” Michael shouted, as loud as he could.
And as she settled into her seat, she heard him and turned, looking out her window at him, her face churning up in confusion.
Who was this guy, and why had he just called her name?
Now Zack was pounding on the back of the driver’s seat, shouting for his buddy to “Go! Go!”-
– as Michael picked up speed and raised the Glock, ready to blow out one of the tires.
Then, without warning, a horn blasted, long and loud, off to his right. Michael jerked his head around just in time to see a city bus bearing down on him, the driver frantically flashing his headlights.
Michael dove to the blacktop and rolled as the bus came to a groaning halt, just inches from where he’d stood. Then tires screeched, horns honking wildly, as another car smashed into the back of the bus, several more piling up behind it.
As Michael pulled himself upright and got to his feet, he saw the Malibu roaring down the boulevard.
And there was Jenna, craning her neck, staring out the back window at him with wide, frightened eyes.
39
The first of the riots was in Sin City, of all places.
No one was quite sure how it started, but the Vegas Strip and the hotels downtown were unusually crowded, and that may have had something to do with it. People from all over the world had packed the casinos, hoping to win it big and cash in on the American dream-a dream that seemed even more remote than usual. So the anxiety level was high and tempers were frayed.
Rumor had it that it began with a simple altercation. Two tourists at odds over which slot machine belonged to whom-along with the three-million-dollar jackpot it was spewing. One of them claimed she’d been straddling two machines and had just turned away for a moment when the other came up and dropped the winning coins, thus robbing the straddler of the reward she surely had coming.
Their fight was brief, but vicious, ending with one woman dead, and the other practically foaming at the mouth, victim of a rage and frustration so virulent that it spread like a contaminant. And the next thing everyone knew, there were people fighting everywhere, taking it into the streets.
But, again, that was just a rumor. The truth is, anything could have set it off.
In an interview on the evening news, one man said it was all the fault of our Godless society. That it was the goddamn atheists and the homos and them terrorist camel jockeys who had brought this down upon us, with their craven depravity and their hatred for their fellow man. As far as he was concerned, every last one of them should be publicly executed, used as examples for the rest of the heathens. Get Jesus or get bent.
Later that day he was shot dead by his wife, who claimed he’d been abusing her for twenty-five years.
It took a few hours for the mayhem to spread to other cities, but spread it did. Political protests, impromptu strikes, small skirmishes that seemed to escalate for no reason other than that people were either scared or fed up. Tired of living in a world that provided them no hope.
Or just plain tired of living.
It was as if humankind had finally given in to its baser instincts and started listening to that little cartoon
