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He awoke at dawn, instantly alert. Taking a quick shower, he let the hot water beat down upon him and then got dressed. As he pulled on a T-shirt, the tattoo on his left bicep, an AK in black lettering, disappeared under the shirtsleeve. The motel did a breakfast of sorts — it was food, anyway — and so he went to the main building to grab some donuts and coffee, which he ate back in his room as he checked over his gear. A habit left over from his days out hunting with Cully. Respect your weaponry, and it’ll respect you, the big southerner had said over and over. Maybe there had been a time when Alex had rolled his eyes a little, but now he knew that Cull had been right. No matter how prepared you thought you were, it only took one mistake to kill you.
Alex loaded a full magazine into the semiautomatic rifle, then clicked it home and sighted along the rifle’s length before replacing the weapon in its case. The pistol he tucked into his holster, which was worn under the waistband of his jeans and almost invisible if you didn’t know it was there. He preferred the rifle, but it wasn’t always possible to use it if people were around. Finally, he took the pistol’s silencer and stuck it in his jeans pocket.
He was ready. He gulped down the last of his coffee, then shrugged into his leather jacket and loaded his car, programming the GPS for Nesbit Street. A moment later, he was pulling out onto Highway 12, the main road through town.
As he followed the robotic voice’s directions, he took the place in with mild curiosity. Pawtucket was like a thousand other small towns he’d seen. The business center downtown had been slowly eaten away by shopping malls, leaving everything looking run-down and frayed around the edges. The high school (THE PAWTUCKET LIONS KNOW HOW TO ROAR! proclaimed the sign) was the largest building in the place. And once the students graduated, they probably hit the ground running and never look back, thought Alex dryly. The only thing the place had going for it was its backdrop of the Adirondacks, with autumn splashes of color covering the mountains like a patchwork quilt.
There weren’t many angels in upstate New York. He knew that the one up here most likely had a clear field — Christ, it had probably fed on hundreds of people already.
The GPS directed him to a tree-lined avenue of Victorian houses. Alex passed an early-morning dog walker with a basset hound; apart from that, the street seemed quiet, the grass still damp with dew. As number thirty-four came into view, his eyebrows rose. Ohh-kay. So this one was into kitsch in a fairly big way. That wasn’t something he’d seen before — they usually liked to keep a low profile; the neighbor who you knew was there but never caught sight of. Maybe this one had decided that you could hide better by being blindingly obvious. Or maybe it just liked plastic wishing wells a whole lot.
He parked the Porsche a few doors down. Apart from the circus in the front yard, the house just looked shabby: flaking green paint with gray wood showing through. Two cars sat in the drive: a brown Subaru and a blue Toyota. Alex turned off his engine, then leaned back in the leather seat and closed his eyes. A few deep breaths later, he had lifted his focus up through his chakras and was carefully exploring the energies in the house.
There were three of them. And they were all asleep.
One of the energies was a middle-aged woman. No, wait a minute — two were. They were similar. Sisters, maybe? Except that one of them was . . . odd. Childlike. Someone with mental problems, perhaps. But definitely both human. OK, disregard those two. The third . . .
He frowned. Time seemed to slow as he probed this new energy with his own. “What the hell?” he muttered.
It had the same “kick” that angel energy had, the same rush of power, but there was no trace of the cold, slimy sensation that he associated with angels. Alex slowly opened his eyes, staring at the house. Human energy fields were instantly recognizable. When you touched them with your own, you simply knew that you were touching like with like. This energy just felt . . . bizarre, as if someone had taken a human energy field and an angel one and mixed them together somehow.
A slight breeze stirred, and the front yard came alive: tiny kites bobbed; little wooden windmills creaked industriously. The cutseyness of it suddenly struck Alex as ominous. He tapped the steering wheel, hardly aware that he was doing so. He had to get a look at what was in there so he’d have an idea of exactly what he was dealing with. And frankly, he’d prefer to do it now, while the thing was still asleep.
Checking the two human energies again, he sensed that they were both in deep delta sleep. Out of it. Good. There was a metal box under the passenger seat; Alex pulled it out and extracted a set of lock picks. He gazed speculatively at the house, jingling the picks in his hand. The front door was out — he was too likely to be seen — but there was sure to be a back door. Should he take a chance? Picking locks had never really been his forte, not like it had been Jake’s. But this didn’t look like the sort of place where he’d be likely to encounter anything state of the art.
Making up his mind, Alex mentally scanned the houses on either side for dogs and then got out of the car, closing the door behind him. He didn’t bother trying to do it softly — if anyone was watching, trying to keep quiet would look a hell of a lot more suspicious than just acting normally. The street remained still, with only the sound of birdsong accompanying his footsteps as he strolled down the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets. The rifle was back in his car, but he could feel the pistol still tucked in his jeans under his T-shirt, there and ready if he needed it.
He turned into the house’s driveway. The concrete had spidery cracks running across it and weeds growing here and there. He edged past the two cars, then continued around the house to the backyard, creaking open the gate of the chain-link fence. No lock; that boded well. Closing the gate behind him, he took in at a glance the overgrown grass and faded wooden lawn furniture, the pots of greenery on the patio.
To his relief, the neighbors’ view was blocked on either side by a dense row of tall arborvitae trees. Alex eased the back screen door open. It had a few holes in it, he noticed — just the thing to keep the flies out. He examined the inner lock and smiled. He was in luck; it was a cheap one. Selecting a rake pick, he inserted it into the keyhole and slid it rapidly back and forth. Almost immediately, there was a faint click as the pins fell obediently into place. Success.
Alex slipped inside, tucking the lock picks back into his pocket. Jake had always sneered at him for using the rake; it took a lot less skill than some of the other picks and was useless against a good security lock. But if it got the job done, why argue?
Glancing around, he saw that he was standing in a pale-blue kitchen with white cabinets. An unwashed pot sat on the stove; there was a meal’s worth of dirty dishes beside the sink. He moved through the kitchen and pushed gently at a partially open door. It swung obediently wider; he stepped through and found himself in a dining room, where he stared in disbelief at the large velvet painting of a sad clown that hung on the wall. Whatever this creature was, it had seriously bad taste. Precarious-looking heaps of clutter filled the room’s corners — stacks of papers, magazines, cardboard boxes. A white lace tablecloth covered the dining table, with a messy pile of mail scattered across one end. Alex picked up the top envelope. A bill from the Pawtucket Water Department, addressed to Ms. Joanna Fields.
He froze as a faint snore sounded in the next room. Quietly, he placed the envelope back onto the pile and pulled out his pistol, flicking the safety off. His fingers dug in his jeans pocket for the silencer; he screwed it on in a few deft movements and eased through a pair of French doors into the living room.
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