When he looked at his watch during dinner, Kitty sighed, her bottom lip pouting. “Can we have a good time without you looking at that stupid thing every five minutes?”
“Sorry. I'm just worried about not getting in touch with my daughter before we left.”
“She'll be fine,” Kitty said, annoyed, and pushed her salad around with her fork before setting the fork down on the plate. “We never get away.”
“I work,” Randy said defensively. He gripped his wine glass and took a sip before he said something stupid and ruined the trip.
Since coming to beautiful Mormon Lake, a half hour drive from Flagstaff, he'd second-guessed every move. The view was exquisite, the cabin amazing, and the steak dinner promising to be delicious. If only he could get past the brewing fight.
“I know you work. I work too,” Kitty said but then looked away. “I used to work.” She turned to him and batted her eyelashes, which he used to love. Now, he saw it for what it was: her way to make him forget about everything and worry about getting her into bed.
“More wine,” he waved at the waiter. “Bring the bottle.”
“You shouldn't drink too much, darling. In fact, once you see the outfit I selected for tonight, you'll wish you were completely sober.”
Randy smiled at that. He had no doubt she would look stunning in something flimsy, lacy, and sexy. She had the perfect body. Her huge, store-bought breasts and her skinny waist accentuating her shapely ass turned men's heads.
He thought back to the time, a couple of months ago, when a former football star for the Cardinals had been to the hospital because his mom was having surgery. After chatting, Randy had gotten the invite to come to dinner with the star and his girlfriend.
By the end of the night, unable to take his eyes off of Kitty, he'd tried to slip her his phone number. Randy couldn't blame him now that he thought about it. She was the perfect trophy wife for someone at the top of his profession, and Randy was standing at the peak.
He wondered how long a fall it would be someday.
“Hello?” Kitty said and tapped the table with her hand for emphasis. “Are you even listening to me?”
“Of course.” Randy looked around for the waiter and the wine. It was going to be a long night.
Chapter 20
July 4th 2003
Manny decided to sample the local breakfast fare while he had time to kill. A busy, likable restaurant named Brandy's offered up Swedish oat pancakes and an endless cup of hot coffee. He sat in a booth and read the local paper, poring through baseball box scores and world news like he didn't have a care in the world.
He'd slept well last night. It was the first uneventful sleep he could remember. He was sure he'd had only pleasant, inconsequential dreams.
After his fifth cup of coffee, he used the payphone to call and check in with Mark.
“On your way back?” Mark asked.
“Not yet. I spoke to her on the phone last night when I got to the hotel. I'm meeting with her tonight.”
“Think you can convince her to come back?”
“I don't see what would stop her,” Manny said.
“How about a crazy story about demons and talking fire?”
“Who said anything about demons?” Manny asked.
“My bad. It's only a talking flame telling you about a demon, right?”
“Exactly. You're making this so easy on me. Now I know why I called you. Moral support. You always seem to know the right thing to say to get me in a better mood and make me realize that what I'm doing isn't so far-fetched and crazy.”
“Crazy?” Mark said. “Nah. Fucked up. But not crazy.”
“Jerkoff.”
“Any plans to waste the rest of your day in sunny Arizona?”
“No. It's way too hot here. I wish you'd told me not to come to Arizona in July. It's about a thousand degrees. I think a day in my hotel room with the air conditioning and room service burgers is my best option.”
“Keep me involved. You know I'm here until midnight, my time. I'm off tomorrow at noon. Have a good day watching hotel porn.”
Tammy smiled even though she wanted to kill Amy Jackson's leering husband. Amy was sick with pneumonia and quite possibly pregnant, although they still hadn't taken the test, and Amy was trying to figure out a way to get her husband out of the room.
“You really don't need to be in here, sir,” Tammy said and tried to will him to stop staring at her chest. You've never seen a big pair, buddy? She wanted to scream in his face.
Tammy looked at Amy and smiled. She was a petite woman and—let's be honest, Tammy thought—she was flat-chested. Still, that was no excuse to be a blatant douchebag in front of your wife.
“I need to be close to my wife,” he said, but if you held a gun to his head, he wouldn't be able to point out where she was currently sitting in the room unless she was sitting on top of Tammy's breasts.
Amy looked distressed.
Tammy decided to take charge because he was starting to give her the creeps. She held out her hand to him. Confused, he took it. She helped him stand on his feet and pulled him toward the door.
“Oh, I'm not leaving.”
“You have to go and finish filling out the paperwork while I examine your wife.”
“She's really sick. I need to be here with her,” he said and subtly stroked her hand with his thumb while they were still touching.
“I'm a nurse. I think I can handle this situation.” Tammy squeezed his hand suddenly and twisted his wrist back, blocking the view from his poor wife. “Don't make me hurt you.”
He left, for the first time not staring at her ample bosom.
“Sorry about that,” Amy said.
“Let's concentrate on you,” Tammy said. She glanced at her watch and smiled. Another hour, and she could be home and relaxing although Stephanie's dad hadn't called yet. As much as she loved her daughter, she needed a break from everything sometimes. This weekend was probably one of those times.
Tammy realized that Manny Santiago, the man behind the strange phone call, wanted to meet with her tonight. As much as she thought she needed to talk to him, she also wanted to relax. She decided she'd put him off until tomorrow. Besides, tonight was her big Fourth of July soiree.
Randy was getting pissed. He checked his watch again, standing at the front door of the cabin. He'd packed the car, checked out of the room already, and was only waiting for Kitty to hurry up. She'd reluctantly pulled out an outfit and her makeup bag and let him pack the rest. He still couldn't get a signal to call his daughter.
Hurry the fuck up, he thought. She always hated when he cursed, telling him she hated “when he talked like he was from Jersey.” Bitch, I am from Jersey.
The shower was still running. Exasperated, he marched across the room and tried the bathroom door. It was locked. He hammered his fist on the door.
“What?” she screamed. “I'm in the shower.”
“We need to leave.”
“I'll only be a few minutes.”
Randy knew that was a lie. He was looking at thirty minutes to an hour before they'd get on the road. At this point, he was definitely going to miss picking his daughter up at school.
“I'll give you five minutes.”
He thought he heard her laugh over the water, but he couldn't be sure. Randy sat down on the bed. He checked his watch again and clenched his fists. “What the fuck am I doing?”
Randy got up and walked the floor, six paces from the bathroom door—water still on—to the front door. He circled the room six times before five minutes had past.
With the water still running, he knocked on the door.
“Five minutes,” she yelled again.
“I'm leaving to pick up my daughter.”
“Stop pushing me. I'll be done when I'm done. Don't rush perfection.”
Randy went to sit back on the bed and stopped. “Am I fucking nuts?” He hovered over the bed and caught a glance of himself in the full-length mirror near the clos
et.
Who the hell are you? What are you doing?
He pulled out his wallet and took three hundred dollar bills and put them on the bed. “Get a cab.”
“Jesus Christ, give me five minutes.”
Randy walked out and never looked back, placing her six luggage bags on the walkway before speeding away. With any luck, he could beat Stephanie home.
He glanced at the cell phone but still had no signal. He needed to call Tammy and get an earful from her for being such a piece of shit, dead-beat dad who never called his daughter. He deserved it.
Tammy is going to kill me, he thought but laughed to himself and relaxed. She was a fiery Irish woman, and it was her passion that he'd fallen in love with.
He missed her.
In any cheesy romantic comedy, the guy screwed up, but in the end, he got his soul mate back, and they lived happily ever after. Randy wanted to think that he'd someday get her back, but the anger was still so close to the surface.
The years hadn't diffused the hatred and the fury from Tammy. He wondered if it meant she still cared and that was why she got so emotional and easily excited whenever they had a disagreement.
Who are you kidding? You damn well hope she still cares, he thought. Randy always assumed they'd be back together at some point, but he'd never tried. God knows he wanted to.
He remembered picking up Stephanie for the Arizona Cardinals game and seeing Tammy in a pair of gray sweatpants, her hair back and no makeup on. All she had to do was smile, and he wanted to kiss her. She was a natural beauty. She didn’t need to spend an hour in the bathroom. Why didn't I say something then? Oh, yeah, I had Kitty in the car. Dumbass.
But Kitty was no more. She'd be furious, and he was going to be put through Hell for a few weeks, but he decided it was worth it. As soon as he got home, he'd have to deal with her and didn't know if Stephanie being there would even matter.
His first phone call would be to his daughter but his second to his friend Jim, who lived in Tempe. He'd take Stephanie to visit his friend, see fireworks, and get away from everything.
The road slithered around the lake, trees rising on the opposite side of the road and covering everything in a nice, comforting shade from the heat.
As he banked around the last turn, he felt the front end of the car slip in mud. The road was suddenly filled with puddles even though it hadn't rained in forever.
Randy took his foot off the gas, attempting to cruise through the water and mud until he got past it, but instead, he was immediately bogged down. He tapped the gas, and his tires spun, kicking mud in all directions.
Instead of screaming and punching the steering wheel, he got out of the car and stood next to the lake, surveying his predicament. “I'm fucked.”
He pulled out his phone, not surprised that it still had no signal. He had two choices: he could walk all the way back around the lake to the main office and use a phone, or he could walk back to the cabin and Kitty, which was half the distance.
There was no real option. He looked across the lake and could just make out the parking lot and the main building. Randy started walking, his shoes sucking into the mud as he took each step.
His foot disappeared into a deep hole of mud, his ankle twisting as his foot and leg up to his kneecap slid into the mud. He toppled forward and fell face-first.
If it wasn't him trying to stand and failing, covered in dark brown muck, he would've laughed. He hoped someday to look back on this and laugh although right now, he was trying to remain calm.
When he got back up, his feet immediately began slipping in different directions, and he fell on his butt, water squishing up his back and into his pants. He managed to get up on his elbows but was horrified to see his legs and torso sucked into the mud like quicksand.
As he struggled, he only managed to slide sideways toward the lake. Randy decided the way out would be to stop fighting to get back to the road, slide out of the mud, and into the water, where he could swim.
Only fifteen feet in front of him up the road, it was dry. Bone dry. How odd is that? Where'd this mud-pit come from anyway?
Randy rolled to his left, and the slop felt like it actually helped him because he started to slide in that direction. It was unnerving, and he instinctively reached down to stop his quickening pace, but it was no good. This close to the lake, he saw the embankment was steeper than it looked, and he pinched his nose just as he slid off the side and plunged into the water of the lake.
The shock of the water being so cold forced his breath, and he swallowed some water, choking and gasping as he broke the surface. When he opened his eyes, he was at least thirty feet from the shore and moving away from it.
He smelled the ocean in his burning nostrils, water still in his mouth and nose. This is a lake in the middle of Arizona, hundreds of miles from the Pacific. Yet it was an unmistakable smell, having grown up on the Jersey shore.
Randy had another thought that went through his mind as he felt his body go numb. He was already underwater again, but he couldn't close his mouth, drinking in the ocean water.
Chapter 21
July 5th 2003
Manny woke with a start and didn't know where he was. He'd dreamed of drowning, sliding from mud into the ocean, and being pulled underwater, never to surface again.
“I'm in my hotel room,” he said, the silence of the room unnerving. He reached and turned on the end-table lamp, expecting to see someone or something hovering over his bed.
He was alone although he felt like he was being watched. He went to the window and pulled back the shades, looking down into a deserted pool area at night.
There was no alarm clock in the room, so he put on the TV and was dismayed to see it was two in the morning. What happened?
Manny remembered wasting a few hours, wandering in and out of stores and sights in Flagstaff until the heat was draining him. He ate lunch at a fast food restaurant, stared at a corner bar for too long before moving on, and then went back to the hotel to wait for Tammy to call.
At some point, he'd fallen asleep, missed eating dinner, and slept for twelve hours. He'd missed fireworks. He'd never experienced jetlag but was sure this was it.
He didn't know what to do now. He wondered if she'd called and he'd slept through the call but had no way of knowing.
He was now wide awake. Manny decided to shower, shave, and get dressed. He'd jump in the rental car and find an all-night diner and get a late dinner/early lunch.
The human was insignificant, but it felt so good to have such ultimate control over this one, especially after all these years. This was the sperm-giver for one of the remaining connections to his Ascent.
With so little time left to wait, his control was getting focused, and he could feel it tingling through him even though he had no human body to use right now. That would change.
The human had struggled mightily in the lake, but there was no real challenge to drowning him, filling his insides with water and small water creatures. Even when he was pulled lifeless from the lake, a part of him still remained, still struggling to come to grips with his fate.
Now, Wiy of the Water turned his vision hundreds and hundreds of miles across the Earth again. The one named Manny Santiago had been tasted once, and he was special. He was also the last of his line. Manny would have to be summoned back although he sensed that it was his goal to come here and challenge Wiy. That would only make the goal easier if the prey came to the predator.
With the woman, he had two options: her or her daughter. Either way, it did not matter, because once he Ascended, he could toy with the other until he grew bored.
He was looking forward to using and destroying each and every human, individually crushing their willpower and forcing them to kneel before his power.
Tammy stood over her sleeping daughter, trying in vain to hold back her tears. She looked like such an angel, wrapped up in her pink blanket and buried in the stuffed animals Tammy and Randy had kept adding to.
Randy.
Tammy left her daughter's room and went to the kitchen, sitting down at the table and putting her hands over her face. This was a bad dream, a nightmare. “And you thought yesterday was bad,” she whispered.
The knock at the door startled her. She figured it was a police detective or someone who knew her ex-husband. Wiping her eyes, she opened the door.
“Can I help you?” she asked the stranger. He looked like a detective with that steely look in his eyes.
“Tammy?”
“Yes.” Tammy stood with her hand on the door. She wanted to collapse into herself, bury her face in the couch cushion, and cry herself to sleep. But she needed to be strong because her daughter would be getting up soon.
“I'm Manny Santiago.”
“Are you a detective?”
He looked confused. “I was. I called you yesterday, but you never called me last night.”
In all the horror, she'd forgotten about this guy. “This is so not a good time.”
“Has something happened?”
“Yes, and I need to deal with it.” Tammy suddenly felt angry. “How did you find my house?”
He shrugged and tried to put on a smile for her. “You're listed in the phonebook.”
“It's, like, four in the morning.”
“I drove by after eating and saw the lights on.”
“I'm going to call the police, Mister Santiago.” Tammy closed the door and locked it.
“Tammy, I need your help.”
“I need you to get off my property or else. I have a gun,” she said and wished she did. This was too unreal, too freaky right now.
He knocked lightly on the door again.
“Go away.”
“I can't. I flew all the way out here from New Jersey because I need your help.”
“With what?” she said through the door, phone in her hand.
She didn't hear anything for almost a minute and thought he'd finally left. Just as she turned away to put the phone back on the charger, she heard him.
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