Evan moved. Too slow. By the time he was up, by the time he had moved into position, it had already happened.
The drunk growled, sounding like a wounded animal that had turned deadly in the depths of its pain. He flung himself forward, moving faster than Evan expected. Not just big, not just strong, but agile.
He swung a fist the size of a radiator at Listings.
Evan’s breath caught in his throat.
Don’t kill him, Listings.
Listings moved like a drop of water skittering across a hot stove top. Evan could barely see her, she was so fast. One moment she was right in the path of the fist, the next… gone.
The drunk seemed as shocked as Evan at Listings’ apparent magic act. She hadn’t moved until the last second, the very final moment before he pummeled her out of existence. Now the momentum behind his punch combined with his inebriation to drive him stumbling forward.
The drunk slipped. Slammed face-first into the bar.
Crunch.
Evan winced as he heard the unmistakable sound of bones breaking. Hopefully just a nose.
The drunk slid to the floor between the stools that Evan and Listings had been sitting on a moment ago. His hand covered his face, and his eyes seemed to be spinning independently. He moaned, then slipped a bit lower.
“Dammit, Listings,” said Evan.
“What?” A few locks of Listings’ long brown hair had managed to pull loose from the rest of her mane. She pushed them back into place impatiently. “I didn’t touch him. He slipped.”
She bent over the drunk. Evan considered pointing out the fact that she had definitely arranged the circumstances so slipping would be a bit more likely, but decided it wouldn’t do anything helpful and shut his mouth.
After five years with Listings, Evan had decided that a good partnership, like a good marriage, was often a matter of just shutting up and letting your significant other do whatever the hell she was going to do. He’d be there if anyone needed help. If not, he’d be there, too. Either way, getting in front of Listings was not a healthy idea.
“Come on, Betty Ford,” said Listings. “Up you go.”
The drunk continued his struggle to get both eyes pointed in one direction as he said, “Who you callin’ Betty?”
He swiped at Listings with one blood-spattered hand. She dodged easily, but her face darkened and her smile returned. “You just don’t learn, do you?”
“Listings, don’t –“
Listings wasn’t listening at all now. That the drunk had come on to her and accosted her was one thing. That he had tried to hit her after she had beaten him would be seen as unforgiveable.
Evan started trying to figure out which was the closest hospital with an emergency room.
Listings raised her fist. It was a small fist, but painfully angular, and several of the knuckles had rows of scars that attested to the fights she’d been in over the years. Evan didn’t move to stop his partner now… not because he didn’t have time, but because he genuinely didn’t want to find out what a coma felt like.
Listings’ hand dropped. Fast as a hornet, so fast Evan could almost hear the air split around it.
But it didn’t connect.
Evan felt like the world, spinning along in its predictable if generally horrible way, had suddenly reversed course. He had seen Listings in a lot of fights. He had never seen her fail to connect with something she tried to hit.
It wasn’t that she missed, per se. It wasn’t as though the drunk managed to slide away from her attack, to dodge her punch as she had dodged his only a moment ago.
No, something – someone – had stopped her. A hand had wrapped around her forearm, stalling her forward momentum, cutting off the attack before it could begin.
Listings looked over her shoulder at the stranger, her anger at the drunk transmuting into rage that someone would touch her.
“Let go of me,” she said.
The man who had stopped her was normal-looking. A bit boring, even. Evan had never seen him before, and even if he had he doubted he would have recognized him. Brown eyes. Brown hair, thinning a bit at the temples and receding a bit along the forehead. And that was the sum total of the man’s physical attributes. Brown on brown, boring on boring. Nothing to hold to mentally, nothing to remember.
He wore a black coat, and it was memorable. It was long and voluminous, seeming to flow like a living thing around the man’s body, pulling light into it and giving nothing in return.
“Let go of me,” said Listings again.
The man smiled. Boring smile. And Evan saw his eyes change. Not in size or shape, but where they had been empty before, now they were full of something terrifying. Madness.
“No,” said the man.
“I said, let go!”
Evan was moving, but again he was too slow. The instant he heard the man speak, heard him say, “No,” he knew that this was the man he had spoken to on the phone. This was the man he had been looking for tonight.
But Listings was faster again. Faster, and too fast, and not fast enough.
She swung at the man, a quick cross with her free hand.
And for the second time tonight, she missed.
The man ducked. Spun her around.
Bright light glinted. Evan had his gun out, but the brightness froze him. It wasn’t the brightness of a light being shone, but of something reflective. Something sharp.
The man had a knife at Listings’ throat. And it was so sharp it grabbed the dim light of the bar and slashed it into a million glinting pieces.
“Don’t move!” Evan shouted.
The man grinned. “Or what?” he said. He pressed on the knife. Not too hard, but even the light pressure made blood well around the blade and drip down Listings’ neck. “You’ll kill me?” He giggled. “How do you kill a man who’s already dead?”
Evan didn’t have time to digest the weirdness of that. Listings’ eyes rolled as though she was mostly irritated with the whole situation. “Shoot him, White.”
“Shut up, Listings,” said Evan. To the man he said, “You’re the one who called me?”
The man smiled. A boring smile, a banal smile. The mad, mundane smile of any of a million people who go about their lives quietly each day hoping no one will notice how close they are to breaking. “Don’t ask questions you already know the answer to,” he said.
Evan wondered if anyone had called 9-1-1. In this part of town, in a bar like this, he figured the chances were about even. Not good odds. “What do you want?” he said, as much to stall as anything.
Tears welled up in the other man’s eyes. His lower lip quivered, and Evan thought he might have killed his partner with his question.
“For it to end,” said the man.
The jukebox clicked. Listings had chosen “You Spin Me Round” too many times to count, and now the song was ending. Evan was gripped by the sudden belief that if the song she had chosen ended before he got her free, she would die.
The song was over.
Another began. And whether it was because Listings had pre-programmed it, or because of some cosmic joke, the same song started again.
Evan had completely forgotten about the drunk, still laying at the base of the bar, at Listings’ feet. It seemed like the ridiculous spat with him had happened a lifetime ago. Now his attention went back to the man, if only for a moment. The big guy groaned as the music started again.
The man who held Listings hostage laughed. The same laugh Evan had heard on the phone before, the same laugh that had been pulling his brain apart, pulling apart his memories and laying him bare.
“I really don’t think he likes this tune,” said the madman. Then, to the drunk, he said, “I’ve been watching you, Ken. You’re a rude pig.”
The madman moved. He was fast. Faster than Listings, and also… something else. Something more.
Something that terrified Evan.
The man’s foot moved. Ken screamed, a single shouted “NO!” that was still too slo
w and then there was a nauseating crunch that was not bone breaking.
The madman moved back, and now the drunk was clawing at his throat. The downed man’s mouth opened and closed, opened and closed, but no sound came out. Just a high-pitched whistle that made Evan’s skin writhe.
He stepped toward the drunk, knowing he had to do something, not know what that could be.
And Listings seized the moment. She spun away from the madman, a blur as she moved out of range. The man slashed out, his knife seeking her neck, but she seemed to flow under it, grabbing her throat, blood around her fingers.
She came to her knees next to Evan.
“Listings!”
“I’m okay,” she gasped. “Just a scratch. Look out!”
Evan wasn’t Listings-fast, but he did all right. And in this case he was glad because it saved him from being gutted. The madman had followed Listings as she rolled, and now he slashed at Evan, who moved away in time to avoid evisceration but not fast enough to completely escape injury. Heat seared across his stomach and he heard his shirt rip. Blood rolled over the waist of his pants.
He knew the instant it happened that the cut wasn’t life-threatening. Maybe he’d need stitches, but that was it.
In the same moment, he was pulling the trigger. Not realizing he was doing it, just acting on instinct. If he’d had a pillow in his hand he probably would have thrown it, but he had the gun so he pulled the trigger.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
He was moving when he squeezed off the shots. Dodging the madman’s attack, moving out of range of the knife. But even with that movement, he knew he hit what he was aiming at. He saw the front sight and rear sight line up perfectly, saw them both merge with the too-close center mass of the madman’s chest in his black coat.
The three shots blasted louder than thunder in the contained space. Evan’s ears rang, and he figured he’d earned himself a year of deafness as an old geezer.
He didn’t care. Because all three bullets hit. He knew it. The madman who had tried to hurt Listings had been blown right out the open door of the bar.
Evan spun to Listings. She was on her knees, feeling at her neck. Blood sluiced from the long shallow gash along the left side of her neck.
“Didja get him?” she said. She was looking at the drunk.
Evan followed her gaze. The drunk – who, if madmen in trenchcoats were to be believed, had been named Ken – was staring up at the ceiling of the bar. He wasn’t moving. Nor would he. One hand clutched as his throat, the other had fallen onto his crotch, as though even in death he was determined to go out as crudely as possible.
“Yeah,” said Evan.
“You sure?” said Listings.
“Yeah.”
She stood. Walked toward the entrance.
“Where you going?”
“I want to know who this nutcase was. And what he had to do with your wife.”
They left the bar. And as they did, Evan thought, strangely, that they were moving into a darkness that would never end.
Listings pulled out her gun as they hit the street.
“You sure that you’re sure?” she said.
Evan felt like he had just fallen into some funhouse mirror version of reality where cause and effect no longer ruled; where up was down and in was out and when you shot a man three times in the chest he didn’t die.
There was no body on the sidewalk, no body on the street.
A man who had been shot three times, a man who should be bleeding – or dead – on the street… was nowhere to be seen.
CRIME SEEN by Michaelbrent Collings… available now!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michaelbrent Collings is an award-winning screenwriter and novelist. He has written numerous bestselling horror, thriller, sci-fi, and fantasy novels, including The Colony Saga, Strangers, Darkbound, Apparition, The Haunted, Hooked: A True Faerie Tale, and the bestselling YA series The Billy Saga. Follow him on Facebook at facebook.com/MichaelbrentCollings or on Twitter @mbcollings.
And if you liked this book, please leave a review on your favorite book review site… and tell your friends!
OTHER NOVELS
BY MICHAELBRENT COLLINGS
THE COLONY SAGA:
THE COLONY: GENESIS (The Colony, Vol. 1)
THE COLONY: RENEGADES (The Colony, Vol. 2)
THE COLONY: DESCENT (The Colony, Vol. 3)
THE COLONY OMNIBUS
CRIME SEEN
STRANGERS
DARKBOUND
BLOOD RELATIONS:
A GOOD MORMON GIRL MYSTERY
THE HAUNTED
APPARITION
THE LOON
MR. GRAY (aka THE MERIDIANS)
RUN
RISING FEARS
YOUNG ADULT AND
MIDDLE GRADE FICTION:
THE BILLY SAGA
BILLY: MESSENGER OF POWERS (BOOK 1)
BILLY: SEEKER OF POWERS (BOOK 2)
HOOKED: A TRUE FAERIE TALE
KILLING TIME
The Colony: Velocity (The Colony, Vol. 4) Page 12