Thumbing through the oversized, laminated menu, Vincent contemplated ordering the Belgian waffles but decided not to tempt fate. He couldn’t afford to pay the dry cleaning bill if he spilled syrup on his suit.
“There’s my favorite former fugitive,” Leah said, approaching his table. “I almost didn’t recognize you without the T-shirt and jeans.”
He looked down at the black coat and maroon tie. “I haven’t put this on since Clementine’s funeral. Would’ve been nice to have a happy occasion to wear it to between then and now.”
Leah smiled sympathetically as she removed her stylish, knee-length coat, which was covered with rapidly melting snowflakes. She shuffled into the seat across from him. “I’m sorry I’m going to miss your brother’s funeral.”
“It’s probably just as well,” Vincent replied. “You being there might raise some awkward questions.”
“If Suzanne comes, you mean?” Leah asked. “You’re the one who pulled a gun on her. By the way, what does your mom think of all of this?”
“They told her the same thing they told the cops and everyone else…‘Vincent Cruz, Leah Chedid, and Jeremiah Weis were working under the auspices of a classified, government-sponsored project in the interest of national security.’ Whenever Mom presses me for details, I tell her I’m not allowed to talk about it. Mostly, I think, she’s just relieved it’s over.”
A waitress of indeterminate age refilled Vincent’s coffee and poured Leah some decaf. After they placed their order—a Greek omelet for Vincent and crepes for Leah—Vincent realized he had lost the thread of their conversation.
“So…your message said you’re flying out East this afternoon…” Vincent prompted.
“Yes,” Leah said. “I’m finally going to meet Boden face to face.”
“What? Look, I know Boden saved our asses after the cops arrested us at Suzanne’s place, but we don’t owe him—”
“I’m going because I want to.” Leah emptied a pink packet of artificial sweetener into her cup. “Boden wants to compare notes, but I also think he’s going to offer me a job.”
“With the CIA?”
Leah took a sip of her coffee, grimaced, and reached for another sweetener. “Boden said Project Valhalla could benefit from my expertise in sleep phenomena, especially RBD.”
“And you’re gonna take the job?”
Leah shrugged. “Maybe. Before you came along, my professional development had sort of stalled out. I was bored. Working with Boden and Dr. Baerwald could prove very rewarding, and I have to admit I am eager to learn more details about Project Valhalla.”
Vincent conjured up a mental image of Leah Chedid in a dark suit and black sunglasses, packing heat. He chuckled. “Well, you already have the badge.”
They drank coffee quietly for a few minutes. Then Vincent said, “They tried to get his body…Daniel’s, I mean. Someone, supposedly from the hospital, called Mom to see if she would consider donating his body to science. I wonder if it was Boden or Levi who called.”
“What did your mother say?”
“She said she wanted a real Catholic funeral with a body. But it still took a long time to get the coroner’s report, which is why the funeral is more than a week late.” Vincent sighed. “I can’t remember the exact lingo, but basically the coroner said his brain just shut off at about the same time I woke up with Jerry in a jail cell.”
Leah reached for Vincent’s hands and gave them a squeeze. “If Boden fills me in on anything that pertains to you and Daniel, I’ll be sure to pass it along to you.”
“Unless it’s classified,” Vincent argued.
She smiled slyly. “Far be it from me to break the rules.”
Their breakfast arrived a moment later, and they ate in silence, lost in their own thoughts. Vincent couldn’t decide how he felt about the idea of Leah moving away. On the one hand, he would miss her. On the other, it would be easier to stop thinking about her if she wasn’t around.
He flinched when Leah asked, “Do you think Bella will be at the funeral?”
After swallowing a forkful of hash browns, Vincent replied, “She said she would be.”
“You talked to her?”
“We’ve had a couple of conversations since Danny died. Bella always had a soft spot for him. I suppose everybody did but me.” He took another bite. Leah continued to watch him. Eyes on his plate, Vincent added, “I don’t know what’s going to happen. Neither of us has filed for divorce yet, but I don’t see us getting back together. Maybe we could be friends again though.”
“Well, talking is a good first step,” Leah said.
“It sure beats sulking.” Vincent attempted a smile. “I’m also waiting for a call back from Jerry’s boss. I figure any job is better than sitting around the apartment feeling sorry for myself.”
Leah wiped her mouth with a corner of her napkin and asked, “Are you going to be OK, Vincent?”
So many questions…you would’ve made a good shrink, Leah.
“The funeral will be all right. I already said goodbye to Daniel…and to Clemmy. I’m going to get a new job, and Mom loaned me some money, so I won’t get evicted. Things are looking up.”
“No more dreams?”
“Valenthor is gone. May he rest in peace. The only dreams I’ve had lately are the run-of-the-mill variety. Half the time I don’t even remember them. Which is nice.”
Leah looked at her watch. “I have to get to the airport. I’ll try to touch base soon.” She scooped up her coat and dropped a twenty-dollar bill on the table. Before Vincent could protest, she said, “You can get the next one. Take care of yourself.”
“You too. Guess I’ll see you around.”
Over her shoulder, she said, “Maybe in your dreams.”
***
Idling at a red light, Vincent glanced down again at the address on the napkin. Not that he needed the reminder. He doubted he would have been able to forget Daniel’s last request if he wanted to.
The light turned green. He gently coaxed Jerry’s boxy, old sedan to a shaky twenty-five miles per hour. He supposed it was only appropriate that he should be driving a bona fide ghetto cruiser. The farther north he went, the more rundown the neighborhoods became. The North Side’s graffiti and barred-up windows reminded him of his childhood, back when Danny invented the game Spot the Crack House. Only later, when plywood replaced kicked-in doors and busted-out windows, would they know who was right.
Vincent shook his head and smiled.
Part of him had hoped the drive to the North Side wouldn’t be necessary. But there had been no surprise guests at the funeral. He must have been glancing around a lot because both his mother and Bella had asked him if he was looking for someone in particular. He hadn’t told them. Not yet.
He slowed down once he reached the street written on the napkin. The house numbers looked back from cookie-cutter apartment complexes that might have seen better days but probably not. When he found the number he was looking for, he pulled into a vacant spot in the crater-filled parking lot. The Buick gave a final belch and went silent. Vincent sighed.
No backing out now. A promise is a promise.
The hallway of the apartment building reeked of cigarette smoke. A steady thump of electronic bass rattled the door of one of the units. Vincent stopped at Apartment 8 and knocked. Several seconds later, the door opened a little. A dark brown eye with long mascara-black lashes peered at him from just above the chain.
“Who’re you?”
“My name is Vincent Cruz. I think maybe you knew my brother, Daniel.”
The eye narrowed. “I don’t know no Daniel Cruz.”
“Not Cruz…Pierce,” Vincent corrected. “We’re half-brothers.”
The door closed, and the chain jangled. Then the woman threw open the door. A cascade of jet-black braids framed a pretty face that regarded him suspiciously. She was short and, judging from the beach-ball bump under her pink tank top, very pregnant.
“You’re Dan’s brother?” she asked. Vincent co
uldn’t decide if the hint of accent was Hispanic or Hood. She looked him up and down, her eyes lingering on his suit. “You must’ve come from the funeral, huh?”
“Yeah…” He shifted his weight from one leg to the other. “Can I come in? I have something I need to tell you.”
She crossed her arms awkwardly above her bulbous belly and scowled. “Unless you’re here to tell me Dan left a fortune for me and his kid, you got no business here.” She stared him down. “That’s what I thought. That asshole was no good to us alive and no good dead either.”
She started to close the door, but Vincent reached out and held it open. “Chloe, wait. I promised Daniel I’d tell you the truth about what happened to him. Please just listen. Then I’ll go.”
Her shiny red lips remained fixed in a frown, but she let go of the door.
“I know Daniel swore to you he was going to stop selling drugs,” Vincent began, “and he didn’t…at least not as soon as he should have. Daniel got arrested for possession with intent to sell. The cops said they would cut him loose if he went undercover to help them nab his supplier. It all went to hell, and Daniel got shot, hit his head, and went into a coma.”
Vincent took a deep breath. “But Daniel never shot a cop, Chloe. The only reason he was there was because he wanted a clean slate. He wanted to be there for you and the baby.”
Chloe’s expression didn’t change, but after a few seconds, a pair of tears trickled down her cheeks. “Are you for real?”
“He didn’t want his son or daughter to grow up thinking he was a bad guy.”
Chloe sniffed and wiped at her face with the back of her hands. “Dan was a bad guy. But he was a good guy too. God, I miss him so much sometimes.”
She started to cry, and the next thing Vincent knew he was holding her, patting her back. The hard bulge of her belly pushed against his abdomen. Her body shook with each sob.
He wished he knew more about her—how she and Daniel had met, how long they had been together before she got pregnant, what she did for a living—but at the moment, all that mattered was that she was family.
Sniff. “I think a part of me was hoping he’d wake up from the coma and come home like nothing happened. We were going to try to make it work. I don’t know what I’m gonna do now.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Vincent said. “You’re not alone. That’s my niece or nephew in there, you know.”
She pulled away and looked down at her stomach. “Niece,” she said. “I’m having a girl.”
If Sin Dwells Deep
An excerpt
from Book Two of
The Soul Sleep Cycle
Prologue
For the Wolf, tracking his prey was almost as thrilling as the kill itself.
False leads. Dead ends. So many places his quarry could hide. Sometimes the trail took him in endless circles or, worse, a straight line that never seemed to decrease the distance between hunter and hunted, no matter how far he ran.
But obstacles only heightened his excitement, delaying the exquisite moment that distracted him during the day and consumed him at night.
Her scent suddenly filled his nostrils, and the Wolf picked up speed. The scenery on either side of the path became a blur. All the easier to pretend he was surrounded by trees. The ground, a forest floor.
As the smell of vanilla intensified, he remembered how she looked back then. The store-bought blond curls framing a flawless neck. Those smirking lips, so red and shiny. The biggest tits in school, teachers included.
Her passably pretty face, soon to be smeared with blood…
Momentarily lost in his hunger, he felt the trail grow colder. The wind roared in his ears, drowning out his own growl of frustration. Reluctantly, he slowed, forgetting the pleasure ahead and focusing only on his memory of her.
He concentrated. He sniffed. The pull returned—subtle at first, then stronger.
Changing course, he allowed himself a brief grin. He’d enjoy the hunt while it lasted. It would be over all too soon.
Now that he was getting so close to her, he couldn’t keep from sprinting. As the imaginary trees vanished and he plunged headlong into more vivid surroundings, he pushed himself even faster. Only when he heard the sound of applause did he stop to assess his surroundings.
The edge of an enormous room. Warm air instead of the coolness of his false forest. Above, a constellation of big, blinding lights. Ahead, the cheers of a crowd. Her sickeningly sweet perfume.
Squinting against the glare of the stage lights, he cautiously flanked the front row of spectators. He wasn’t surprised to see their faces were practically blank. A hint of a mouth. The suggestion of eyes. A bump that would form a nose if he stared at it long enough.
He didn’t bother. His prey wasn’t among the dummies.
Beyond the studio audience, a semicircle of camera men surrounded an immaculately clean kitchen. All lenses were aimed at a woman behind a waist-high counter, dumping ingredients one by one into a tall, shiny pot.
The moment of discovery always took him back to that fateful hunting trip with Uncle Bob. When the buck had stepped up to the stream to drink, unaware of him and the mortal danger he represented, he’d nearly lost his nerve. But in the end, he did himself—and his uncle—proud. His first kill was clean. The animal never knew what hit it.
Drunk from the power only a predator can know, he watched her. His pulse raced. He grew rock hard.
The buck had never seen who killed it, but she would.
As the woman delivered lines about proper measurements to the cameras, he studied her. The years since high school graduation had etched deep lines upon her fleshier face, grooves that even a thick coat of stage makeup couldn’t hide. Hidden beneath a loud floral-print blouse, her once-glorious rack sagged down to a belly made doughy by too much food, too many beers, a bunch of kids, or all the above.
Seeing the former heartbreaker in such sad shape filled the Wolf with perverse joy. She and her stuck-up friends had laughed in his face when he had finally mustered the courage to ask her to the prom. “Little boy,” she had called him. The next day, the Queen Bee and her two drones had filled his locker with shaving cream.
She had thought herself superior to him, but as he watched the pitiful woman stir the pot with a wooden spoon, he promised to prove her wrong.
He’d show her he was the man of her dreams, whether she liked it or not.
Teeth clenched tightly, painfully together, he looked back at the audience. With a little concentration, two of the women in the front row started to resemble the woman’s high school friends—the stupid bitches who had latched onto her like a pair of remoras because they couldn’t achieve popularity on their own. They had laughed on cue whenever their leader insulted other students.
They would die first.
A voice in the back of his mind urged caution, warning him of the dire consequences he’d face if he got caught. The words belonged to a woman, one he hated even more than Queen Bee.
But the Wolf had come too far to turn back. He craved vengeance. Hungered for blood.
He dropped to his knees and placed his hands on the smooth cement floor. The transformation was instantaneous and painless. One moment, he was a man, and the next, a fine—if massive—specimen of canis lupis.
He crouched, his new muscles trembling with unspent power beneath a pelt of long black fur. Then he pushed off with his massive paws, leaving gouges in the floor.
A living shadow, he cleared the distance to the studio audience in a single leap. The claws of one foreleg had already sunk deep into his first victim’s neck and shoulder before any of the mannequins reacted. Drone Number One’s scream was quickly echoed by others. The Wolf reared up on his hind legs and struck again, a brutal blow that reduced her face to bloody strips of skin and cartilage.
As the lifeless body slumped to the ground, chaos filled the studio. Queen Bee’s other friend tried to run with the rest of the crowd, but the Wolf pounced. He threw his full weight at he
r back, sending her sprawling into the aisle. She let out a pained gasp when he landed on top of her.
He considered rolling her over so that he could watch her expression as he eviscerated her. But he had grown bored with killing dummies a long time ago. Tonight’s target had to be someone real.
A quick glance over at Queen Bee revealed an expression of pure terror. If he didn’t hurry, she might run or wake up, and while he loved a good chase, he couldn’t wait another night for satisfaction.
For the Wolf, tracking his prey was almost as thrilling as the kill itself.
Almost.
If Sin Dwells Deep will be released in Fall 2018.
Visit david-michael-williams.com for updates.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I want to thank my wife, Stephanie Williams, for all of her support throughout this project. If Souls Can Sleep wouldn’t have happened—couldn’t have happened—without her. She has the dubious role of reading the worst of my writing (first drafts), pointing out what’s broken without bruising my ego too badly, and putting up with me when my skin isn’t as thick as it should be.
They say one of the greatest contributions to a book’s commercial success is the cover art. If that’s true, then you’re holding a future best-seller in your hands. I couldn’t be happier with what designer extraordinaire Mary Christopherson created for If Souls Can Sleep. And I’m eager to seeing what she conjures up for the sequels!
I’m a firm believer that he who proofs his own work has a fool for a client. Fortunately, I know Dusty Krikau, who has a keen eye for wayward words and misplaced punctuation. She has my undying gratitude for delving into such a stylistically strange manuscript and saving me much embarrassment.
Finally, I would like to thank these members of the Allied Authors of Wisconsin, who were exposed to If Souls Can Sleep in its earliest form, chapter by chapter, month after month. It’s a testament to your acumen and investment in my success that you were able to provide cogent criticism to such a nonlinear narrative.
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