His head snapped back into the seat. His eyes watered as black splotches danced across his vision.
“Keep talking,” the sheriff said. “Keep talking and I'll do it again.”
Malcolm looked over at him, held his hands in the air. Broyles squinted at him, his hand cocked in a fist inches away from his face. “The girl's fine, okay? I wanted to tell you. But the others weren't having any of it.”
Sheriff Robbie grabbed him again. “Why are you saying that? I told you to stop putting it on.”
“I'm not 'putting it on.' She's fine, Broyles. I saw her tonight. I almost brought her to you myself.”
The sheriff leaned back in his seat, eyes hopping between his pistol and the street. Someone was walking there, sashaying along the sidewalk in front of Malcolm and Paul's duplex without an ounce of tension in their stride. Malcolm watched her approach. It had to be a her with the way her hips swayed back and forth. Her skin was tan under the streetlight, gathering up the glow and hoarding it. She showed a lot of it too—her miniskirt and halter top left little to the imagination.
“Damn,” Broyles said. He didn't take his eyes off her. “You know, Morris? I think you might actually be telling the truth. So I'm going to let you prove it. Take me to Nora. Now.”
Malcolm shook his head. “I can't do that. If we show up there together they'll—no.”
Broyles chuckled. “They'll what? Know you sold them out?” Then, before Malcolm could register what was happening, something flickered in the car and a pistol was in his mouth. The metal was cold. It made him shiver in the passenger seat. “Is that what all this is about? How about this, Morris? I'm going to blow your head off and dump your body in the street if you don't take me to the girl right now. Okay? Your conscience is clear. Now, I'm about to pull this gun out of your mouth. You have ten seconds to start giving me directions. If you don't, it's going back in and bam. Lights out. Got it?”
Malcolm nodded with his eyes. He flexed his jaw and forced his mouth to stay perfectly still. It would only take the slightest flinch to set the man off.
“Good.” The gun slid out of his mouth, but Broyles kept it close to Malcolm's temple. “I tried to play this straight, you know.” He sighed, smiled a little like he was trying to convince himself. “Lemhaven's finest blew me off when I told 'em about Nora Swanson. Now where is she? Where's the girl?”
“Not far. She's in the Cloisters. Only about twenty minutes from here.” A shadow moved in the corner of his vision. The girl walking down the street. Their eyes met and she walked faster now, heels clopping along the pavement.
“Where?” said Broyles. He saw her too, but a witness wasn't enough to persuade him to put away the gun. Not in a city like Lemhaven.
“I don't remember the street names. But I can show you how to get there.”
Broyles pressed the gun against his temple. “Not good enough, Morris. Tell me where she is. What's the goddamn address?”
Malcolm watched the girl make her way down the street. She'd stripped off her heels and was running straight for the car. He turned to Broyles.
“No. You don't get the address unless I come with you. That's the only thing keeping you from killing me right here. That's what you really want to do, isn't it? Get revenge on the guy who ruined your life?”
“Wrong answer,” said Broyles. “You have ten seconds to give me the address. Ten. Nine. Eight.”
“Keep counting,” Malcolm said. “If you kill me—”
“Seven. Six.”
“—you'll never find her.”
“Five. Four. Three. Two.”
Broyles cocked the gun.
“One.”
Malcolm moaned until the sheriff took the pistol away. Then, panting and sweating, he gave him the address.
Broyles repeated it a few times before a tapping sound interrupted him. It made Malcolm start in his seat. The young woman stood outside the driver-side window, scraping it with her fingernails. Her face was free of worry. She even smiled.
“Oh for God's sake,” said Broyles. He rolled down the window and stuck his gun in her face before she could speak. “Get the hell out of here. Go on, scram.”
The girl smiled wider. She looked right past the gun. When she leaned forward, she filled the car with the scent of rose petals. “You know,” she said, “that's not very nice.”
“Stay out of it,” Broyles said. But his gun wavered. His eyes wavered too. They fell from the girl's eyes down to her chest.
She leaned forward even further, her eyes inches away from the gun barrel, to speak to Malcolm. “You didn't want to leave that apartment, did you? I saw him drag you out here. I'm not a mind reader, but even an idiot can see you two aren't old friends.”
Broyles waved the pistol in front of her face. “I said—”
“Yeah, yeah. Stay out of it. It's not my business. But how could that be true when I've lived on this street all my life and never seen you before?” She leaned forward until her forehead touched the gun barrel. “What are you gonna do? Shoot me?”
“No—just—no. Stop. What do you want?” The sheriff lowered his gun with a trembling hand and let it rest on the console. His eyes had tracked Malcolm's every movement a few seconds earlier, but now they found a new object to hold their interest. Objects, actually. They strained the fabric of the girl's halter top and threatened to spill out into the car.
She smiled when she noticed his eyes on her. “I see. You don't want to shoot your pistol.” Then she reached forward and grabbed his hand. “Maybe you want to shoot another kind of gun?”
Broyles shook his head and began to sputter. “No. Listen here, young lady. That's not what I'm… you need to leave. You don't know what you're getting yourself into.”
She grabbed Broyles's hand and held it above the steering wheel. Slowly, deliberately she moved it through the air and onto her breast. She did this without breaking eye contact—like it meant about as much to her as passing the saltshaker at the dinner table.
It meant more than that to Broyles, though. Much more. His face twisted in pain while his good sense and libido battled it out. His eyes flashed to his passenger—to the loaded gun resting on the console. But his hand was still on the girl's breast. Squeezing. Massaging it for courage or the right words or the perfect excuse. Then the tension on Broyles's face eased and his eyes shut as his fingers worked over the skin. His decision was made.
Just then the girl pulled his hand away, stepped back into the street. “You like that? Who am I kidding? Of course you like that.” She flipped a finger through her hair, sending more perfume wafting into the car.
“Wait,” Broyles said. His fingers crept closer to the girl's breast before he slammed them against the window frame. “How old are you anyway? Can you wait? At least until I'm done with him.”
The girl laughed. “Old enough. Why? You a cop? Surely you aren't a cop—accosting a poor man like this.”
Broyles bit his lip. He shook his head, which sent his pale cheeks flopping against the headrest.
“As to your second question,” said the girl, “time's money, honey. Maybe I'll be around later. Maybe I won't. This isn't a restaurant that takes reservations, and Windmill Hill is so sexually repressed.”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Broyles, waving her off. “I get it.” He reached out and grabbed her by the waist and pulled her in. “How much?”
“One fifty.”
“Come on.”
The girl shrugged. “I'm sure I can find someone else—”
“No.” Broyles smiled a terrible smile. Then he turned to Malcolm. “My friend here will spot me, won't you, Morris?” He picked up the gun again and pointed it at him.
“Damn it.” Malcolm reached into his pocket and pulled out a stack of cash for Broyles. “Here. Now can you just let me go? You have the address.”
“And risk having you run over there and convincing them to leave? Not a chance.” He popped open the console, and when he lifted the lid something metallic glinted in the st
reetlight. He grabbed it and slapped one end of it around Malcolm's wrist and the other around the steering wheel. Handcuffs. They cinched tight with a click. Then Broyles grabbed his gun and shuffled out of the car. “Don't worry. I'll be back soon.”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“Not at all.” Broyles smiled. “I mean, look at her for God's sake. We'll use your place.” He shut the car door and slipped a hand around the girl's waist.
“Don't worry, honey,” she said. “I'm sure this will only take a minute.” Then the car alarm beeped and they were off. Malcolm watched them clop down the street from where they'd come. He strained against the handcuffs, but it was no use. They were tight—inescapable. Broyles had let him slip through his grasp once. It wouldn't happen again. You could tell by the way he walked—the effortless swagger in his step. He wasn't just going to catch his prey. He was going to play with it too. Malcolm stopped struggling and shut his eyes. For a moment it was almost peaceful. Then the voices started up again. Whispering. Teasing. If only he had some of that golden stuff he'd tear that steering wheel right off and…
His eyelids grew heavy. The voices droned on, and with them came terrible pangs of guilt. Broyles had the address. What would he do to them? What would he do to those poor girls?
He watched the sheriff take another poor girl down the street until they disappeared into his duplex. He stared at the porch while the minutes slipped away, no closer to escape. Maybe if he just started honking. That might be enough to wake up the neighbors and…
No.
Who was he kidding? That title implied at least a cursory level of regard for people other than yourself. There weren't neighbors in Windmill Hill. Just people who happened to live next to each other. There weren't neighbors in all of Lemhaven. Trust had slipped away into those historic cobblestone streets and vanished. No one would even poke their head out at the sound of someone else in trouble—much less call the cops. And the cops… well. They were too busy committing crimes of their own to care.
Finally, some unknowable time later, a silhouette in front of the duplex caught Malcolm's eye. The porch light turned off before he could get a good look, but that person's frame was way too big to be the girl's. It was too big to be Broyles either—unless sex had somehow broadened his shoulders and stretched his vertebrae. Whoever it was, they were alone.
Now that figure jumped down the porch stairs in a single leap and cut through the yard. Their frame took up almost the entire sidewalk as they walked, elbows pumping, leaning forward as if they were walking into a headwind. Malcolm sat up in his seat and watched the figure approach. Had there been someone else in the duplex? Maybe the hobo from before? The unspoken answer tasted bitter on his tongue. The man wasn't that big, and no way in hell could he walk like that being as drunk as Malcolm had found him.
The figure disappeared under a group of overhanging oak branches. They came out on the other side, illuminated by one of the few functioning streetlights. That cleared things up a bit. It was a man. Maybe he'd eaten Broyles, but he looked nothing like the man who'd left him in handcuffs. This man was bald, broad-shouldered. Everything about him was mean. He stomped down the sidewalk in a powder blue three-piece suit like he'd chosen the color just to goad a passing idiot into making the wrong comment. Then he'd have an excuse to knock them out. Brown dress shoes slammed the pavement with every step. Here was a man who lived to fight—lived to scrap. Here was the perfect foot soldier for the gang war raging in the heart of Lemhaven…
Here was the man knocking on the window now with sweat spilling off his hand and sticking to the glass. Malcolm kept his eyes straight ahead while the man knocked. The doors were locked. That would slow him down at least. The man dressed like he fed on attention. Maybe ignoring him would make him go away.
But Malcolm's string of bad luck or misfortune or whatever the hell it was did what it always did:
It continued.
CHAPTER FIVE
The man stopped tapping the window glass and started pounding it instead.
He smiled when Malcolm looked over at him. Laughed when Malcolm lifted his cuffed hand. Then the car alarm beeped, and the locks popped open. That man had Broyles's car keys. He stepped forward and grabbed the handle on the passenger door.
He jerked it open before Malcolm could replace the lock.
The hulk of a man filled the open doorway. He rubbed his face and wiped his fingers on his suit coat, but it did little to dry up the sheen of perspiration covering him. He cleared his throat.
“What?” said Malcolm, jiggling the handcuff attached to the steering wheel. “Are you her pimp or something? That guy's crazy. He left me here like—look. I didn't have anything to do with it.”
“I know,” the man said. The bass in his voice vibrated the headrest against Malcolm's ears. But the man's demeanor didn't match the authority of his tone. His shoulders were stiff, his cheeks flushed as if he were almost apologetic to disturb him.
“What is it, then?” said Malcolm. “Just when you think you've had enough for one night...”
The man responded by pulling out a tiny set of keys from his suit pocket. He leaned his gut across Malcolm's lap, put the key in the handcuffs, and twisted. Malcolm's wrist popped free. The other cuff the man left hanging on the steering wheel, regarded it with a faint smile.
“Thanks,” Malcolm said without moving in his seat. His wrist was asleep. It demanded that he rub it, but something about the way the man was looking at him made him hesitate.
“What?” the man said. “Do you feel… uncomfortable? I bet it's my size. A lot of people worry about my size.”
Malcolm shook his head. He froze when fresh questions sprang to his lips. “Wait. How'd you know I was in here? What'd you do to Broyles? That's a sheriff you messed with, pal. He'll make your life miserable. Trust me.”
The man smiled. It was the ugliest smile Malcolm had ever seen. Teeth grew like weeds in every direction, tangling together, trampling over one another in his junkyard of a mouth. That smile only widened when Malcolm lurched backward in his seat.
The man motioned for Malcolm to scoot over, then slid into the passenger seat and shut the door. “I do trust you,” he said, patting Malcolm on the arm. “That's why I've been calling you here for months.”
“Calling me?”
The stranger cleared his throat and held a fat finger in the air. Here was a man who wouldn't be badgered into answering questions until he damn well felt like it. They looked at each other in silence for a moment before he spoke again.
“Broyles is… reasonably okay. Conked out, but he'll live. Things are backwards for him tonight. This time he had his nightmare before he went to sleep.”
“Speaking of nightmares,” said Malcolm, “I need to get out of here before he comes back. I've got to warn the others before he—”
“Relax,” the man said. He squeezed his arm, which made Malcolm do the exact opposite of what he'd instructed. “I'm sorry. I'm making you uncomfortable.”
“No,” Malcolm lied. “It's not like that. There just isn't time to—”
“It's my size, I'm sure. Perhaps if I offered a more appealing form?”
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
The man fell silent. When Malcolm looked over at the passenger side he found him undressing. He had his face buried in his suit, and his vest was resting on the floorboards.
“Hey,” Malcolm said. “What are you doing? Jesus.”
The man didn't slow his whirlwind of arms and fabric. He tore the white dress shirt and sent half a dozen buttons flying through the car. Instead of the flab and muscle and chest hair Malcolm expected, the skin beneath was tan and supple. Hairless. It belonged to a surfer or tropical island native or…
It belonged to a girl.
Malcolm's eyes widened as he watched the skin shrivel and tighten. The man's clothing—his flesh, too—fell away into the floorboards and broke apart into a thousand tiny pieces. Beneath that husk emerged
the girl from before. She wore the same skirt and halter top and an enormous smile. “How about now?” she asked.
Malcolm's mouth fell open, hung there. Silent.
“It's always messy if I do it in tight spaces.” She bent over and brushed a few of the man's skin fragments off her lap and onto the floorboards. They scattered like dandruff flakes and disappeared. Then she crossed one leg over the other and smiled. “Better?”
Malcolm sprang away and banged his head against the driver-side window. His fingers scrambled for the door handle, but even then he couldn't stop looking at her. “What the hell? You ate him?”
She reached for him, raking his arm with her fingernails. Fingernails very much unlike the man's.
“He is me and she is me, baby.”
“What? What about Broyles?”
“Right where I said he was. I knocked him pretty good on your dresser, but he'll come to any minute.” She slipped out of the car, landing gracefully in a pair of heels. “Pull up and meet me in front of your place. Hurry.”
It wasn't a casual request.
Malcolm hesitated. The girl leveled her eyes on him and let them linger. He took one last look at the passenger seat—empty now, all evidence of the man vanished—and nodded.
He started Broyles's car and drove it up a block. He left it running in front of the duplex. The strange girl—the shapeshifter—waved him over from the front porch.
He froze behind the wheel.
This was impossible.
He'd left her on the sidewalk just a moment ago. Seen her shrink in the rear-view mirror. But there she was, waiting for him with her arms crossed like he was a bus driver behind schedule.
What was left of his rational mind screamed at him, adding to the cacophony of voices inside his head. It demanded he drive off. It urged him to fly away from here until the gas tank was empty, then get out and keep walking after that. But then the girl frowned at him before disappearing into the duplex, and Malcolm found himself stepping out of the car to join her.
He couldn't escape that look. She'd locked eyes with him and fired a silent warning. Don't you dare try to leave. Whatever I did to that gangster in the powder blue suit, I can do to you too.
Heretic (Demon Marked Book 2) (Demon Marked Saga) Page 3