She shuddered and stared at her hand. Five cartridges in the cylinder . . . .
He grabbed her wrist again and pulled her back to the entrance of the alley. The body still twitched in the slush, trying to push itself erect with the stumps of its arms, as if it was searching for its head. It couldn't balance and fell, again and again. Maureen slapped a hand across her mouth and turned away, desperate for a place to run, a place to hide.
"You need to watch." His voice was quiet but implacable. "You must never talk of this. You'll see why, in about a minute. That man did not belong in your world."
He turned her around. He didn't squeeze, didn't hurt, but she could feel the power in his grip and realized, with a shock, that he was built as solidly as the other man. He was immensely strong. Those hands gave her no choice.
What she had seen as chain mail was a gray anorak of tight-woven wool. Splattered blood glistened black in the reflected streetlights. The gold crown was a yellow ski cap, equally worn and stained. His pants looked like army surplus. He must be soaked. She was soaked, and she started to shiver with the cold rain and reaction. Her gaze darted around everywhere except at the slowing jerky spasms of the corpse.
Blue light flickered in the corner of her eye, and for an instant she thought it was the flashers of a police car come to rescue her from this madness. The light strengthened and steadied. Terror snatched her breath again and froze her pulse.
It was the corpse.
It burned with a blue flame like gas, smokeless, with flashing tendrils of copper green or cobalt or strontium red like the flame-test for salts in chem. lab when she waved the platinum wire over the Bunsen burner. The alley filled with a quiet hiss and sizzle that must be the rain and the slush boiling, because she could feel the heat of the burning twenty feet away through the storm. Her mind locked on the horror, and she barely noticed when her rescuer let go of her.
Bits of flame showed her where the severed hands lay. A blue ball consumed the head and melted the snow-bank across the alley. Liquid fire like gasoline floated on the water and licked up splashes of blood from pavement and wall. It even outlined her rescuer, eating the blood off his sweater and pants.
Flesh dissolved. Organs dissolved. Bones glowed into ash and hissed into the flowing water of the melting. The skull popped, spattering gouts of flaming skin and brain across the slush.
Acid rushed up from her belly, and Maureen vomited.
When she could see again, the alley was dark. Wisps of steam floated upward and vanished in the freezing rain. The only evidence of the fight, of her terror, of the corpse, was a scattering of holes melted through the snow to the brick pavement of the alley.
She staggered out into the pale orange light of the street. Her teeth chattered uncontrollably.
"You need warmth and light. I'll buy you a cup of coffee."
The voice startled her. She had forgotten about the knight dressed like a street bum, out wandering in a storm.
She ought to scream and run. Part of her mind was screaming. But whenever he came close to her, she felt calm radiating from him like heat from a sunlamp. She remembered strength, and grace, and a sense of protection. She remembered a tantalizing smell.
"God, what the Mob would pay to be able to get rid of a body like that," she blurted. "Was that magic? Did you do that?"
"Define magic. That was spontaneous human combustion, well documented in scientific literature. Of course, the subject wasn't exactly human."
She staggered into a recessed doorway and squatted down, trying to clear her head. The apartment was at least a mile away. Maureen didn't think she could make it.
She needed coffee.
She needed warmth.
She needed explanations.
She stared up at the stranger. Silhouetted against the streetlights, he looked too damned similar to the man who had been following her. And he hadn't really answered her question. He had just killed . . . something. Something "not exactly human."
All the bone seemed to melt out of her legs and spine and she huddled back against the doorway. Maureen's memories ran off with her, fleeing the alley. Buddy Johnson had looked like that. Squat, strong, hairy, broad nose and powerful jaws like the Christmas Nutcracker and a forehead that looked like the business end of a battering ram. Java Man walked the streets of coastal Maine. He grew up to play pro football. Brutal aggression fit in there. Steroid rage. He'd bought off a couple of rape and assault charges with his earnings.
Maureen shivered and curled tighter into her ball. She was suddenly ten years old, cold and wet and frightened, hiding from the neighborhood bully who insisted on playing "doctor" with her when he came over and Jo wasn't home yet. It hurt. Every time she met a man, she had to fight down those memories. She kept wishing Buddy Johnson was dead and buried along with her teddy bear and tap shoes.
Something touched her shoulder, and she flinched back. Words flowed around her, gentle, barely louder than the sleet rattling against the storefront glass. She shrank back into the deepest corner but felt implacable hands lift her and guide her back out into the storm.
"You need a chance to dry off and something hot inside you. There's an all-night coffee shop a few blocks from here."
Those were her own thoughts, pulled out of her head and spoken. The man knew what she needed. He wanted to help her. He was concerned. And now that he was close, she smelled him again. He was the first man she'd ever gotten close to, who smelled right. He smelled safe.
"Prefer. B-b-b-booze. Need. D-d-d-drink." Her teeth were chattering too fast for coherent speech.
The apparition in the yellow ski cap shook his head. "The only bar close to here is no place for a lady. Let me buy you coffee."
"S-s-strip joint. Next b-b-block. Open. Serve booze. Walk by it every n-n-night. Seen naked women b-b-before. M-m-mirror."
Besides, she was much too cold to be affected by the atmosphere of sex. And she was used to aggressive, wanton women. She lived with one.
Author Bio
James A. Hetley is also known as James A. Burton. He lives in the Maine setting of his Hetley-authored contemporary fantasy novels The Summer Country, The Winter Oak, Dragon’s Eye, and Dragon’s Teeth. His residence is an 1850s house suitable for a horror movie, with an electrical system installed while Thomas A. Edison still walked the earth, peeling lead-based paint, questionable plumbing, a furnace dating back to Teddy Roosevelt’s presidency, a roof perpetually in need of shingling, and windows that rattle in the winter gales. He's an architect. Not just any architect, but he specializes in renovation and adaptive reuse of old buildings. Go figure.
Other diverse connections to his writing include black belt rank in Kempo karate, three years in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, a ham radio license, and such jobs as an electronics instructor, auto mechanic, trash collector, and operating engineer in a refrigeration plant. He continues a life-long fascination with antique crafts and the hand-tool skills of working wood and metal.
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