lips.
“You should,” Orson said. “You flunked out of my class.”
Luther was sitting up against a metal pole, to which he was attached by a bright and shiny length of chain. His hands were free, and he was in some sort of a shed. “You do this to all the students who flunk your class?”
Orson laughed, giving Luther a slap on the shoulder. He felt good about this one.
“Lemme ask you something. When you were approaching me on the sidewalk. Were you actually shopping?”
“Shopping?”
“I got the feeling you were sizing me up.”
Luther stayed quiet.
“You hard up for money, Luther? What were you going to do? Try and take my wallet?”
“Something like that,” Luther grunted.
“Most people I bring here look scared. Are you scared, Luther?” Orson asked.
“Of what? You? You gonna give me another of your boring lectures?”
Orson walked over to the door and pulled it open. A waft of cool, dry air swept into the shed, coupled with the spicy scent of sagebrush and something else. He grabbed the handles and headed back inside, pushing a man who’d been strapped to a wheelchair with fifty feet of barbed-wire.
“I thought I smelled blood,” Luther said.
Orson grinned. “Oh, we’re going to do the brave thing? All right. I’ll play along.” He pushed the young man into the middle of the shed.
He was naked, eyes bugging out, still stunk of alcohol.
Orson said, “This is Juanito. Six hours ago, he was drinking beers down in Rock Springs. He passed out on the bar, woke up in the parking lot. Unfortunately for our friend, I picked him up.”
Juanito’s chest started rising and falling, his stomach bulging and retracting, the barbs digging into his gut with every expansion.
Luther said, “You might want to—”
Orson quickly removed the man’s ball-gag and he spewed what must have been a gallon of sour beer onto the floor.
“Too much cerveza?” Orson asked, laughing.
The man launched into a stream of Spanish that sounded to Orson like quite a bit of begging so he jammed the ball-gag back into his mouth.
“You remember that time we went for coffee back in Vermont?”
Luther nodded.
“I thought I saw something in you then. Something in your papers, too. They were god-awful, don’t get me wrong, but I think you’ve got…potential.”
“For what?” Luther asked.
Orson smiled and pulled his Morrell knife out of a leather holster attached to his jeans.
It was a beautiful weapon. He took a moment to appreciate the view, how it felt in his hand.
He set it on the concrete floor of the shed within range of his student, and then took a step back.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Orson said. “This is a test.”
“Your tests were always too hard,” Luther said.
“Well this one is a little outside the curriculum. Go on. Pick up the knife. You should be able to reach it.”
Luther leaned forward, the chain allowing him to move four feet out from the pole.
“Pretty blade,” Luther said as he lifted it.
“Now I’m wheeling Juanito over,” Orson said, pushing the wheelchair within range. “Here’s what I’d like you to do. Get a good grip on that beautiful ivory handle and—”
Before Orson had finished his sentence, Luther sprang to his feet and thrust the blade into Juantio’s throat, twisting it so violently it cocked the man’s head at a funny angle.
The arterial spray was spectacular, and Orson was still laughing uncontrollably by the time it had diminished to an irregular spurt.
The wheelchair had rolled back after the initial blow, just out of Luther’s reach.
He was straining desperately, the knife still in his hand, to deliver another thrust.
Orson clapped as he walked back over to Luther.
“I swear I had a feeling about you,” Orson said.
“Yeah, well, it was mutual. Ever since that day in class when you lectured on the Inquisition, I thought you might have the Darkness, too.”
“The Darkness?”
“It’s what my father calls it.”
“Calls what?”
“Whatever you and I are.”
Somewhere out on the desert, a coyote yapped.
Orson was still smiling.
“Luther, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
A Murder of Crows
Charles Kork had seen movies where a character got a flat tire and was so mad he kicked it. That had always seemed pointless and stupid until now. Staring at the shredded tire and ruined rim on his Honda Accord, Kork didn’t just want to kick the damn thing. He wanted to take out his hunting knife, stab the fucker about a hundred times, and then toss it into a bonfire while imagining its screams of agony.
And of course he didn’t have a spare, because that was currently serving as one of the front tires, which had chosen to pop a week prior. Some asshole mechanic had warned him, last oil change, that his tires were bare and constituted a hazard. It had turned out to be prophetic. While the first flat was just a slow leak, this one had been a full-force blowout at sixty miles an hour, causing him to spin the car in a complete circle before fishtailing onto the shoulder alongside the road. Lucky he didn’t flip the car.
But that wasn’t the worst part.
The worst part was that Kork had the mutilated body of a stripper in his trunk.
He kicked the tire a few times, swearing into the empty, mid-afternoon sky, and then stepped away and tried to think.
Middle of goddamn nowhere.
But he’d seen a state patrol car an hour ago. Even on lonely country roads like this, cops patrolled. Eventually, one would pull over, offer to call a tow truck.
What were the odds that he could buy a new tire without anyone knowing about the body?
Worst of all, he’d bought the car using his real name, and his goddamn fingerprints were all over it.
Kork took a deep breath, let it whistle out through his clenched teeth, watching his breath steam. He knew what he had to do. And it had to be fast, before a cop—or just as bad—some nosy motorist, stopped by with a big cornfield smile and a “got you a flat tire there, friend?”
Kork looked up and down the road. Indiana had to be the flattest fucking state in the country. He could see for miles in either direction. In all directions. He might as well have been on stage at Woodstock. Anyone coming would see him immediately.
And the fucking crows!
They were everywhere.
Circling and dive-bombing the fields. Scavenging for missed ears of corn.
So he’d better hurry.
It was a fall day. The morning had been colder than shit, a hard freeze overnight, but the sun had burned through the cloud cover and now it blazed down onto his face. He could feel the early pressure of a headache building.
Fumbling for his keys, Kork walked around the rear of the car to the trunk. He popped it, staring at the blue
