by Adams, Nancy
And for once, I knew exactly who I wanted to invite to dinner.
I was sitting on my bed when I heard them stirring, and I said, “My room.” I didn’t raise my voice above normal conversational level, but I didn’t need to, of course. Horace, Rudy and Simone came only a couple of minutes later.
“We had a situation, today,” I began, and they all sat down on various pieces of my furniture. “Nathan wanted to go buy curtains and stuff for your rooms, and he took two of his grandkids along, Faith and Jack, and I went, too.”
I described what had taken place, and told them how I’d caught Pogo and made him tell me where to look for Jordan—and something strange happened. As I told about biting off his finger, I suddenly had a mental image of Pogo, his hand being stitched up at what looked like an emergency room. Horace looked at me with his lips pursed, as if he could tell I was startled, but the image passed quickly, and Horace kept quiet until I finished by saying that I was planning to make Jordan my meal that night.
Horace
I let Amber tell me what had happened, and I couldn’t help feeling a sorrow. I had not known the boy, but the fondness she had felt for him was obvious in her voice, and I ached for her.
But she intended to go after this Jordan, to take revenge on him for what he had done. One of the things I learned early on was that, despite the fact I was undead and immortal, despite my great strength and unusual powers, I was still a creature that was at least partially ruled by emotion. Keeping emotions under control was even more necessary for one of us, even one like Amber, than it was when I was alive. I said as much, but she was not to be deterred.
Amber
“Listening to your voice, and the bitchy tone in it, I’d say you do need to feed, and soon,” Horace said. “But, Amber-luv, are you sure you want to go after this particular one? One of the things you must remember is that you are still human, in some ways, and you have to keep your emotions in check, in order to avoid mistakes that can cause you problems.”
“I’m sure,” I answered him. “And I’m not really emotional, Horace, I’m sort of beyond that; it’s like I’ve already accepted what happened, but now I want to do what will make me feel like I’ve set it as right as I can.”
“She’s like ice,” said Simone, and I half-smiled at her.
Simone
Amber was colder right then than I’d ever seen her. She really was like ice, she was hard and sharp and ready to push past anything got in her way. Made me all sexy, watchin’ her like that, and I knew Horace wasn’t gonna talk her out of what she wanted to do.
Thought hit me to go with her, but then I thought, Nah—she needs this! Turned out I was right, but more’n I thought at the time.
Amber
“Yeah. I’m like ice, right now.” I stood up and reached onto a nightstand for a rubber band I’d seen there earlier. I stuck it between my teeth as I pulled my hair back into a ponytail, then used it to bind the hair in place. “Jordan is mine, and I’m going to get him. I just wanted to tell you what happened, before I left. I’ll see you in the morning.”
The three of them watched me for another moment, and then Horace nodded. “Very well, then,” he said, “go and do what you need to do. We’ll be back as early as we can, so if you need to talk, later...”
I grinned, and I think it must have looked evil, because Simone and Rudy both went wide-eyed at me. Nothing more was said, and we all left my room.
We walked together out the front door and over to the garage. Horace got into a Porsche with Simone, Rudy took a tiny little MG, and I went straight to my T-bird, put the key in the ignition and fired it up. I drove it out the open bay door and down the drive, pushed the button to open the main gate and headed for Gardena. The other two cars followed me to the first stoplight; then went in different directions of their own.
Finding Sacramento and Morgan was easy, but I didn’t see any sign of Jordan’s Caddy. I passed the intersection and went to a factory building down a couple of blocks; the night shift was apparently on duty, because the parking lot was full, and I locked up the T-bird in a dark area toward the back. There were no other cars close by, and it was almost invisible. I thought it would be safe there, while I did a little exploring.
I walked back up to where Morgan crossed Sacramento, and listened. I’d heard Jordan’s voice, and I knew I’d recognize it if I heard it again; if he was in the vicinity, I’d find him. I walked along as I listened, and had gone less than a block when I heard a young woman’s voice say, “Jordan...”
I froze, and listened harder. Sure enough, the voice I’d been listening for spoke a second later. “What you want, Bitch?”
The girl swallowed, and I could tell she was scared. She tried to say something once, then had to start over when her voice failed.
“Mama say you got to leave,” she said. “She don’t want you here, word’s out the cops lookin’ all over for you.”
Jordan must have given her a contemptuous look, because his voice was dripping with it. “Yeah?” he asked. “That what Mama say? Well, you go tell Mama I said she can suck my black ass! I ain’t goin’ nowhere ‘til I make up my mind what to do!” I heard a slap, and the girl gasped, but I could hear her footsteps as she stumbled out of the room.
I’d pinpointed the direction the sounds had come from, and zeroed in on the house. It sounded like Jordan must have been in the cellar, and I heard the girl running up some stairs, confirming my suspicion. I was alone on the street, except for a couple of passing cars, and I waited until they were gone before I hurried over to hide in some bushes beside the house. One of them was near a window that looked into the cellar, and I saw a washer and dryer. Beyond them was a doorway, and through it I could see a pair of long legs sticking out into the floor of another room. Jordan’s legs, I was sure, and he must have been sitting on a low couch or something.
I thought about how to get him out of the house, and came up empty at first, but then an idea hit me. I suspected that if he heard that police were in the area, he’d run out the back, and I could follow him easily, then.
I checked out the house next door, and couldn’t detect anyone inside it, though there were a couple of lights on in upstairs rooms. No sounds of radio or TV, no voices, no breathing that might be someone sleeping. I quickly went to one of its own cellar windows and pushed until I felt the latch snap, then slipped inside.
I found a telephone on the main floor, and dialed the Operator. “Operator, I need the police,” I said, and she connected me almost instantly.
The woman who took my call was brusque. “Is this an emergency?” she asked instantly.
“Well, I think the guy you’re looking for is around my neighborhood,” I said, “the one who stabbed that young boy a few hours ago? He’s been running around here, making lots of noise, and he’s got most everyone scared to call, so I thought I should.”
I gave her a name I made up on the spot, and said I’d seen Jordan a block up the street from where he was really holed up, and she promised to send officers right away. I hung up, slipped out the same way I’d gotten in, and went back to kneel under the bush beside the house where he was hiding.
Sure enough, three police cars arrived a few minutes later, and cruised the street while a couple of officers on foot went door to door. It didn’t take two minutes for the girl to come rushing down the stairs again.
“Shit, Jordan,” she whispered frantically, “the police goin’ house to house around here, lookin’ for you! You got to get outa here, if they ask Mama, she gonna tell ‘em right where you at!"
He didn’t even hesitate, just jumped up and ran up the stairs. He took off out the back door as I was getting into position to follow, and ran like mad across the yard and into an alley. I hurried to keep him in sight, and saw him go into a garage two houses down. A second later, he backed his Cadillac out and drove it quietly along the alleyway.
I broke into a run, and hoped no one looked out a window right then; I doubted the police would
believe reports of a blonde girl running forty miles an hour through town, but I didn’t want to take a chance on it. Jordan was driving carefully, keeping below the speed limit to avoid attracting attention. I followed his car to where it turned left onto a busier road, and then I poured on the speed, keeping in the shadows along the side.
Jordan passed through town quickly, and I stayed close behind him. I had thought he might go for one of the main highways, but he seemed to be trying to stay on back streets, and that was fine by me. I checked street signs as I passed them, and realized he was heading toward his home turf; South Ventura was only a couple of blocks ahead.
This could be bad for me, I thought, for surely the cops would have his home staked out, wouldn’t they? If he got caught before I got to him, I’d have to go back down to skid row, and I had my heart sort of set on dark meat, and Jordan meat in particular. I decided to make my move at the first possible chance.
He cruised down South Ventura, but didn’t stop, and no cops came out to give pursuit. I was surprised, but I guess I shouldn’t have been. Local police don’t have the manpower to stake out every place a suspect might hide, even a street punk murder suspect. I didn’t look the gift horse in the mouth, though, and I was delighted a moment later when he turned into what looked like a park. I had to cut across the road in front of traffic in order to keep his car in sight, and I suspect the drivers I cut off must have thought they were seeing things!
Chapter Thirty-one
The area was almost a wilderness, with trees everywhere, and even better, it seemed to be deserted. I followed him about a half-mile, into an area with lots of cover, lots of bushes and trees that would muffle the sound of his screams. I was about to catch up to the car and try to grab him right out of it, when he suddenly pulled over and stopped. He killed his lights and just sat there for a moment, and I stood back and watched until he got out.
He’d apparently taken out the bulb from the dome light, because no light came on when he opened his door. He slipped out into the darkness, and moved stealthily over to a big tree, to hide behind it and look back toward the street.
I listened, and didn’t hear anything that concerned me. There was someone running and breathing hard back toward Ventura, but I was confident that if they heard the screams that Jordan was sure to be making shortly, they’d go the other way fast.
Besides, I was so hungry that I was beginning to think I understood the hunger-madness—I doubt if I would have cared if a dozen people stood by to watch me eat, so I put that lone person out of my mind instantly. The smell of Jordan’s flesh, so close to me, was so enticing that I was literally drooling, and I kept licking my lips and swallowing to keep from letting it leak out of my mouth.
I was about fifty feet from him, beside a bush, and watching. I decided that this was the place, and I stripped myself down to my undies quickly, then looked back at my prey. Jordan looked like he was about to make a move, so I launched myself hard and fast, and just as he stepped out from his hiding place I caught him by his neck. I slammed his back into the tree, knocking the breath out of his body.
“Hi, Jordan,” I said, and the sound of my voice startled me; it was high-pitched and soft, the way I sound when I’m just being playful, the way I used to talk to my little sisters all the time. It almost startled me, but I didn’t take time to think about what it meant. I was too excited to be looking at his face, too ready to enjoy ripping him to shreds and stuffing those shreds into my mouth.
His eyes were huge. “Don’t you recognize me?” I asked. “Oh, but maybe you didn’t see me—I was behind the van when you murdered my friend Jack, today. I was really, really upset about that, and I just thought I needed to, you know, catch up with you and set a few things straight. That okay with you?”
He didn’t say a word, just kept staring at me with those big eyes, looking from my face down to my naked body and back. Despite the way I was talking, I could feel my rage building. I was just about to the point of losing control, of just biting into him and feeding to kill my hunger and anger, but some part of me that I didn’t recognize seemed to be taking over. I continued to just hold him. I was trying to figure out what was going on, trying to figure out why I was acting the way I was.
Something down deep inside me, something subconscious, was seeing some value in Jordan and what I was about to do to him that I didn’t understand, and I could feel thoughts racing somewhere in the back of my mind. It was almost as if staring into his terrified eyes was telling me something, something I couldn’t recognize on the conscious level—and then suddenly it hit me.
I giggled, and somehow that giggle was more terrifying to Jordan than anything else I’d done, because suddenly he was fighting me and trying desperately to get away from me, I felt his legs kicking me, and his fist caught me in the side of my head, but none of it hurt me, of course. I hauled him back toward me and slammed him into the tree again, and he went limp as he gasped for breath once more.
“Y’know, Jordan?” I said, my voice still high and playful-sounding. “I’ve had this problem, a problem that’s been bothering me for several days now, but I think you’ve just helped me solve it! Do you know what my problem was?”
He only stared at me, of course, still trying to pull in enough air to make a breath, but when I repeated the question, he managed to shake his head in the negative.
“Well, I’ll explain it to you, then—you see, Jordan, I’m a monster. I’m the kind of monster that scares little kids—hell, I’m the kind of monster that scares the shit out of big, strong men like you! And most of the time, see, I don’t mind being a monster—but every now and then, when I think about some of the things I do when I’m being a monster, I start to feel really bad, y’know? But now, thanks to you, I don’t have to feel bad anymore, and so I should thank you for helping me solve my problem!"
His eyes got bigger and bigger as I spoke, and I was still sort of shocked at the way I was acting. I sounded like a smart-assed kid, the way I must have sounded in junior high school when the boys I didn’t like were trying to flirt with me, and I had this maniacal grin on my face that wouldn’t go away.
“Now, the question is, do you know how you helped me solve my problem? No? Well, I’ll tell you, then, Jordan, you just relax and little Amber will tell you all about it!” I giggled again, and he almost fainted, but I shook him. “You see, Jordan, us monsters, we kill people sometimes—well, in my case, all the time—but it bothers me when I think about the people who loved them, and who were dependent on them, you know what I mean? I feel bad when I kill someone, and then I think about how maybe they had kids they loved, and who loved them, or maybe they had a wife or someone else who might be waiting for them to come home, but they never will—that makes me sad, y’know?
“But now, thanks to you, I don’t have to worry about it anymore, because now you’ve shown me a whole new way to be the best monster I can be! See, thanks to you, now I know that there are men so evil in this world, men who think so little of taking or destroying lives, that they really, truly deserve what I do to them. So, what I’m going to do is, I’m going to start hunting those men, men who are evil, so evil that even if they do have wives or kids, I’ll be doing those people a favor to kill the bastards. Because, truth be told, if they’re that evil and they have people who love them, well, then sooner or later they’re gonna hurt those people, you know? So they deserve to suffer, they deserve to die...” I paused, and ripped his shirt away.
I looked deeply into Jordan’s big, brown, terrified eyes, and I laughed again, not a giggle this time but a deep, throaty laugh. “The way you deserve me,” I said. “Tell me, Jordan—do you think you can guess what it is I’m gonna do to those men, the ones who deserve me, when I find them?”
He was trembling by that point, but he managed to shake his head slightly from side to side, to tell me that, no, he couldn’t even hazard a guess, so I smiled and moved closer to his face, giggled again and said, “Why, I’m going to eat them, silly!"
His eyes took on sheen of pure horror as I pulled him close and took a huge bite out of his left shoulder. My teeth bit off pieces of the bones of his shoulder, but it didn’t matter to me. Unlike the man the night before, Jordan’s flesh tasted so unbelievably wonderful that I just chewed it up and swallowed, and when the pain finally hit him, and he began to scream, I shuddered in sheer sadistic delight.
I took another bite, this time from his chest, and then another from his other shoulder. I tore his left arm completely off, and held his elbow so that I could eat the flesh of his upper arm the way I used to eat a chicken-leg drumstick. I’d only taken a couple of bites when I realized that he would bleed out too quickly, however, so I grabbed the end of the artery that was spurting blood with each heartbeat, pinching it shut. I raised the temperature of my hand until acrid smoke was rolling, and the heat seared the blood vessel, cauterizing it completely and stopping him from bleeding so much.
His arm was dying fast, though, and I tossed it away as I bit into his chest again. He was screaming his head off, of course, because I was eating him alive, and for some reason I found his screams even more exciting and satisfying than any of the others I’d had. I thought of what he’d done to poor Jack, and how he’d mistreated Faith and abandoned his own son, and I wondered how many others he’d hurt—and the more I thought about those things, the better he tasted to me. I ate most of his right arm, as well, and more of his chest muscles, and just to be cruel I took a big bite out of the right side of his face, but by then he’d stopped screaming out loud and was whimpering, and it was just about then that I caught the sound of his heart.
His body slid down the tree, and I followed, straddled his hips and sat on him. The thrill of the kill hit me, then, and like always I looked into his weeping eyes as I snatched his heart from his chest and bit into it. His eyes moved, and I saw that he knew exactly what it was I was eating just then, and before I even realized it was about to happen, I was shaking like a leaf in a whirlwind with the most powerful thrill I’d ever felt. I took another bite of his heart, and even as I did so it tried to beat, to pump life-giving blood through the body it was no longer a part of.