by Paula Guran
She closed her eyes and took several long, deep, calming breaths; focusing on a mantra, moving herself back into stillness until she knew she would be able to reply without screaming at him.
“Don’t,” she said carefully, “Ever. Do. That. Again.” She punctuated the last word by driving the dagger she held into the doorframe.
“Certainement, ma petite,” he replied, his eyes widening a little as he began to calculate how fast she’d moved. “The next time I come in your window when you sleep, I shall blow a trumpet first.”
“You’d be a lot safer. I’d be a lot happier,” she said crossly, pulling the dagger loose with a snap of her wrist. She palmed the light switch and dimmed the lamps down to where they would be comfortable to his light-sensitive eyes, then crossed the room, the plush brown carpet warm and soft under her bare feet. She bent slightly, and put the silver-plated dagger back under her pillow. Then with a sigh she folded her long legs beneath her to sit on her rumpled bed. This was the first time Andre had ever caught her asleep, and she was irritated far beyond what her disturbed dreams warranted. She was somewhat obsessed with her privacy and with keeping her night-boundaries unbreached—she and Andre were off-and-on lovers, but she’d never let him stay any length of time.
He approached the antique wooden bed slowly. “Cherie, this was no idle visit—”
“I should bloody well hope not!” she interrupted, trying to soothe her jangled nerves by combing the tangles out of her hair with her fingers.
“—I have seen your killer.”
She froze.
“It is nothing I have ever seen or heard of before.”
She clenched her hands on the strand of hair they held, ignoring the pull. “Go on—”
“It—no, he—I could not detect until he made his first kill tonight. I found him then, found him just before he took his hunting-shape, or I never would have discovered him at all; for when he is in that shape there is nothing about him that I could sense that marked him as different. So ordinary—a man, an Asian; Japanese, I think, and like many others—not young, not old; not fat, not thin. So unremarkable as to be invisible. I followed him—he was so normal I found it difficult to believe what my own eyes had seen a moment before; then, not ten minutes later, he found yet another victim and—fed again.”
He closed his eyes, his face thoughtful. “As I said, I have never seen or heard of his like, yet—yet there was something familiar about him. I cannot even tell you what it was, and yet it was familiar.”
“You said you saw him attack—how, Andre?” She leaned forward, her face tight with urgency as the bed creaked a little beneath her.
“The second quarry was—the—is it ‘bag lady’ you say?” At her nod he continued. “He smiled at her—just smiled, that was all. She froze like the frightened rabbit. Then he—changed—into dark, dark smoke; only smoke, nothing more. The smoke enveloped the old woman until I could see her no longer. Then—he fed. I—I can understand your feelings now, cherie. It was—nothing to the eye, but—what I felt within—”
“Now you see,” she said gravely.
“Mais oui, and you have no more argument from me. This thing is abomination, and must be ended.”
“The question is—” She grimaced.
“How? I have given some thought to this. One cannot fight smoke. But in his hunting form—I think perhaps he is vulnerable to physical measures. As you say, even I would have difficulty in dealing with a severed spine or crushed brain. I think maybe it would be the same for him. Have you the courage to play the wounded bird, ma petite?” He sat beside her on the edge of the bed and regarded her with solemn and worried eyes.
She considered that for a moment. “Play bait while you wait for him to move in? It sounds like the best plan to me—it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve done that, and I’m not exactly helpless, you know,” she replied, twisting a strand of hair around her fingers.
“I think you have finally proved that to me tonight!” There was a hint of laughter in his eyes again, as well as chagrin. “I shall never again make the mistake of thinking you to he a fragile flower. Bien. Is tomorrow night too soon for you?”
“Tonight wouldn’t be too soon,” she stated flatly.
“Except that he has already gone to lair, having fed twice.” He took one of her hands, freeing it from the lock of hair she had twisted about it. “No, we rest—I know where he is to be found, and tomorrow night we face him at full strength.” Abruptly he grinned. “Cherie, I have read one of your books—”
She winced, and closed her eyes in a grimace. “Oh Lord—I was afraid you’d ferret out one of my pseudonyms. You’re as bad as the Elephant’s Child when it comes to ‘satiable curiosity.’ ”
“It was hardly difficult to guess the author when she used one of my favorite expressions for the title—and then described me so very intimately not three pages from the beginning.”
Her expression was woeful. “Oh no! Not that one!”
He shook an admonishing finger at her. “I do not think it kind to make me the villain, and all because I told you I spent a good deal of the Regency in London.”
“But—but—Andre, these things follow formulas, I didn’t really have a choice—anybody French in a Regency romance has to be either an expatriate aristocrat or a villain—” She bit her lip and looked pleadingly at him. “—I needed a villain and I didn’t have a clue—I was in the middle of that phony medium thing and I had a deadline—and—” Her words thinned down to a whisper, “—to tell you the truth, I didn’t think you’d ever find out. You—you aren’t angry, are you?”
He lifted the hair away from her shoulder, cupped his hand beneath her chin and moved close beside her. “I think I may possibly be induced to forgive you—”
The near-chuckle in his voice told her she hadn’t offended him. Reassured by that, she looked up at him, slyly. “Oh?”
“You could—” He slid her gown off her shoulder a little, and ran an inquisitive finger from the tip of her shoulder blade to just behind her ear “—write another, and let me play the hero—”
“Have you any—suggestions?” she replied, finding it difficult to reply when his mouth followed where his finger had been.
“In that ‘Burning Passions’ series, perhaps?”
She pushed him away, laughing. “The soft-core porn for housewives? Andre, you can’t be serious!”
“Never more,” he pulled her back. “Think of how enjoyable the research would be—”
She grabbed his hand again before it could resume its explorations. “Aren’t we supposed to be resting?”
He stopped for a moment, and his face and eyes were deadly serious. “Cherie, we must face this thing at strength. You need sleep—and to relax. Can you think of any better way to relax body and spirit than—”
“No,” she admitted. “I always sleep like a rock when you get done with me.”
“Well then. And I—I have needs; I have not tended to those needs for too long, if I am to have full strength, and I should not care to meet this creature at less than that.”
“Excuses, excuses—” She briefly contemplated getting up long enough to take care of the lights—then decided a little waste of energy was worth it, and extinguished them with a thought. “C’mere, you—let’s do some research.”
He laughed deep in his throat as they reached for one another with the same eager hunger.
She woke late the next morning—so late that in a half hour it would have been “afternoon”—and lay quietly for a long, contented moment before wriggling out of the tumble of bedclothes and Andre. No fear of waking him—he wouldn’t rouse until the sun went down. She arranged him a bit more comfortably and tucked him in, thinking that he looked absurdly young with his hair all rumpled and those long, dark lashes of his lying against his cheeks—he looked much better this morning, now that she was in a position to pay attention. Last night he’d been pretty pale and hungry-thin. She shook her head over him. Someday his gallantry
was going to get him into trouble. “Idiot—” she whispered, touching his forehead, “—all you ever have to do is ask—”
But there were other things to take care of—and to think of. A fight to get ready for; and she had a premonition it wasn’t going to be an easy one.
So she showered and changed into a leotard, and took herself into her barren studio at the back of the apartment to run through her katas three times—once slow, twice at full speed—and then into some Tai Chi exercises to rebalance everything. She followed that with a half hour of meditation, then cast a circle and charged herself with all of the Power she thought she could safely carry.
Without knowing what it was she was to face, that was all she could do, really—that, and have a really good dinner—
She showered and changed again into a bright red sweatsuit and was just finishing dinner when the sun set and Andre strolled into the white-painted kitchen, shirtless, and blinking sleepily.
She gulped the last bite of her liver and waggled her fingers at him. “If you want a shower, you’d better get a fast one—I want to get in place before he comes out for the night.”
He sighed happily over the prospect of a hot shower. “The perfect way to start one’s day. Petite, you may have difficulty in dislodging me now that you have let me stay overnight—”
She showed her teeth. “Don’t count your chickens, kiddo. I can be very nasty!”
“Ma petite—I—” He suddenly sobered, and looked at her with haunted eyes.
She saw his expression and abruptly stopped teasing. “Andre—please don’t say it—I can’t give you any better answer now than I could when you first asked—if I—cared for you as more than a friend.”
He sighed again, less happily. “Then I will say no more, because you wish it—but—what of this notion—would you permit me to stay with you? No more than that. I could be of some use to you, I think, and I would take nothing from you that you did not offer first. I do not like it that you are so much alone. It did not matter when we first met, but you are collecting powerful enemies, cherie.”
“I—” She wouldn’t look at him, but only at her hands, clenched white-knuckled on the table.
“Unless there are others—” he prompted, hesitantly.
“No—no, there isn’t anyone but you.” She sat in silence for a moment, then glanced back up at him with one eyebrow lifted sardonically. “You do rather spoil a girl for anyone else’s attentions.”
He was genuinely startled. “Mille pardons, cherie,” he stuttered, “I—I did not know—”
She managed a feeble chuckle. “Oh Andre, you idiot—I like being spoiled! I don’t get many things that are just for me—” she sighed, then gave in to his pleading eyes. “All right then, move in if you want.”
“It is what you want that concerns me.”
“I want,” she said, very softly. “Just—the commitment—don’t ask for it. I’ve got responsibilities as well as Power, you know that; I—can’t see how to balance them with what you offered before—”
“Enough,” he silenced her with a wave of his hand. “The words are unsaid, we will speak of this no more unless you wish it. I seek the embrace of warm water—”
She turned her mind to the dangers ahead, resolutely pushing the dangers he represented into the back of her mind. “And I will go bail the car out of the garage.”
He waited until he was belted in on the passenger’s side of the car to comment on her outfit. “I did not know you planned to race him, Diana,” he said with a quirk of one corner of his mouth.
“Urban camouflage,” she replied, dodging two taxis and a kamikaze panel truck. “Joggers are everywhere, and they run at night a lot in deserted neighborhoods. Cops won’t wonder about me or try to stop me, and our boy won’t be surprised to see me alone. One of his other victims was out running. His boyfriend thought he’d had a heart attack. Poor thing. He wasn’t one of us, so I didn’t enlighten him. There are some things it’s better the survivors don’t know.”
“Oui. Left here, cherie.”
The traffic thinned down to a trickle, then to nothing. There are odd little islands in New York at night; places as deserted as the loneliest country road. The area where Andre directed her was one such; by day it was small warehouses, one-floor factories, an odd store or two. None of them had enough business to warrant running second or third shifts, and the neighborhood had not been gentrified yet, so no one actually lived here. There were a handful of night watchmen, perhaps, but most of these places depended on locks, burglar alarms, and dogs that were released at night to keep out intruders.
“There—” Andre pointed at a building that appeared to be home to several small manufactories. “He took the smoke-form and went to roost in the elevator control house at the top. That is why I did not advise going against him by day.”
“Is he there now?” Diana peered up through the glare of sodium-vapor lights, but couldn’t make out the top of the building.
Andre closed his eyes, a frown of concentration creasing his forehead. “No,” he said after a moment. “I think he has gone hunting.”
She repressed a shiver. “Then it’s time to play bait.”
Diana found a parking space marked dimly with the legend “President”—she thought it unlikely it would be wanted within the next few hours. It was deep in the shadow of the building Andre had pointed out, and her car was dead-black; with any luck, cops coming by wouldn’t even notice it was there and start to wonder.
She hopped out, locking her door behind her, now looking exactly like the lone jogger she was pretending to be, and set off at an easy pace. She did not look back.
If absolutely necessary, she knew she’d be able to keep this up for hours. She decided to take all the north-south streets first, then weave back along the east-west. Before the first hour was up she was wishing she’d dared bring a “walk-thing”—every street was like every other street; blank brick walls broken by dusty, barred windows and metal doors, alleys with only the occasional dumpster visible, refuse blowing along the gutters. She was bored; her nervousness had worn off, and she was lonely. She ran from light to darkness, from darkness to light, and saw and heard nothing but the occasional rat.
Then he struck, just when she was beginning to get a little careless. Careless enough not to see him arrive.
One moment there was nothing, the next, he was before her, waiting halfway down the block. She knew it was him—he was exactly as Andre had described him, a nondescript Asian man in a dark windbreaker and slacks. He was tall for an Asian—taller than she by several inches. His appearance nearly startled her into stopping—then she remembered that she was supposed to be an innocent jogger, and resumed her steady trot.
She knew he meant her to see him, he was standing directly beneath the streetlight and right in the middle of the sidewalk. She would have to swerve out of her path to avoid him.
She started to do just that, ignoring him as any real jogger would have—when he raised his head and smiled at her.
She was stopped dead in her tracks by the purest terror she had ever felt in her life. She froze, as all of his other victims must have—unable to think, unable to cry out, unable to run. Her legs had gone numb, and nothing existed for her but that terrible smile and those hard, black eyes that had no bottom—
Then the smile vanished, and the eyes flinched away. Diana could move again, and staggered back against the brick wall of the building behind her, her breath coming in harsh pants, the brick rough and comforting in its reality beneath her hands.
“Diana?” It was Andre’s voice behind her.
“I’m—all right—” she said, not at all sure that she really was.
Andre strode silently past her, face grim and purposeful. The man seemed to sense his purpose, and smiled again—
But Andre never faltered for even the barest moment.
The smile wavered and faded; the man fell back a step or two, surprised that his weapon had failed him—
And something suddenly blurring about his right hand. As it connected with Andre’s upraised left arm, Diana realized what it was—almost too late.
“Andre—he has nunchuks—they’re wood,” she cried out urgently as Andre grunted in unexpected pain. “He can kill you with them! Get the hell out of here!”
Andre needed no second warning. In the blink of an eye, he was gone.
Leaving Diana to face the creature alone.
She dropped into guard-stance as he regarded her thoughtfully, still making no sound, not even of heavy breathing. In a moment he seemed to make up his mind, and came for her.
At least he didn’t smile again in that terrible way—perhaps the weapon was only effective once.
She hoped fervently he wouldn’t try again—as an empath, she was doubly-vulnerable to a weapon forged of fear.
They circled each other warily, like two cats preparing to fight—then Diana thought she saw an opening—and took it.
And quickly came to the conclusion that she was overmatched, as he sent her tumbling with a badly bruised shin. The next few moments reinforced that conclusion as he continued unscathed while she picked up injury after painful injury.
She was a brown-belt in karate, but he was a black-belt in kung fu, and the contest was a pathetically uneven match. She knew before very long that he was toying with her—and while he still swung the wooden nunchuks, Andre did not dare move in close enough to help.
She realized (as fear dried her mouth, she grew more and more winded, and she searched frantically for a means of escape) that she was as good as dead.
If only she could get those damn ’chuks away from him!
And as she ducked and stumbled against the curb, narrowly avoiding the strike he made, an idea came to her. He knew from her moves—as she knew from his—that she was no amateur. He would never expect an amateur’s move from her—something truly stupid and suicidal—
So the next time he swung at her, she stood her ground. As the ’chuk came at her she took one step forward, smashing his nose with the heel of her right hand and lifting her left to intercept the flying baton.