“Who do you work for!” Czanek demanded.
“I work for the Supremate.”
There was that word again. Supremate. Probably a gang leader. The kid must be burned out on dust; he was no P.I. “Who tipped you about the bugs I planted? Was it Jervis? The dean? Who?”
“It was the sisters,” Tom explained. “They work for the Supremate too. They’re his daughters, his children.”
The kid was flaked. What good would killing him do? These sisters, whoever they were, must know about Czanek too, along with Besser and Winnie. If I kill the kid, I gotta kill them all.
“You were in the wrong place at the wrong time, Mr. Czanek.”
Too much was going on at once; Czanek couldn’t think. Like how did the kid get into the office? It had been empty, Czanek was sure of that. And he was sure he’d locked the door behind him.
“All right,” Czanek said. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You and me are going to walk out that door, nice and easy like, and then we’re going for a little ride.”
“Wrong,” Tom said. Suddenly he had something huge in his hands. It looked like a long, wide bladed ax. “You’re gonna stand there like a good little boy while I put this through your head. Nice and easy like. Then I’m going to bury you.”
Now even Czanek spared a laugh. “Where were you when the brains were handed out? I’ve got a gun. See?”
“I don’t mind loud noises,” Tom said. “You can go hard or easy. Your choice, man.”
It had to be drugs, PCP or something. There was all kinds of shit on the street that made you stone crazy and fearless as a sewer rat. But Czanek couldn’t stand here all night. He had to make his move now. “I’m not fooling around here. If you don’t drop that ax, I’m going to have to kill you.”
“Oh, it’s not an ax,” Tom obliged. “It’s called a beam hewer. Colonial guys used them to cut rafters and shit. And it’ll do a job on a human head too. You should’ve seen Sladder.”
Jesus, Czanek realized. I’m gonna have to pop this guy.
The blade’s edge glittered. The pitch of Tom’s voice rumbled down. “Sorry, Mr. Czanek. I’m afraid your time is up.”
Czanek shouted “Don’t!” as Tom, the Achillean myrmidon, the haunter of the dark, raised the hewer high above his head.
Czanek emptied the Charter in five evenly spaced taps. The impact of the slugs mowed the kid down like a hinged duck in a shooting gallery.
Czanek stood in grainy, hot silence. Gun smoke stung his eyes. Unaffected, he stared down at the dead boy.
Then the dead boy got up.
Tom’s smile never wavered. His clean white T shirt bore no evidence of blood, just gritty black powder marks. The grouped slugs had punched a smoking hole in the middle of his chest. It was a deep hole.
“Don’t worry,” Tom said. “I won’t charge you for the shirt.”
Again, Czanek thought: I am in some shit.
The empty piece fell out of his hand when the girl entered the room. There was a strange, resonant hum, and a shrinking line of light that was black.
But the girl was just a child. She stood caped in black, a white face in the room’s dark. Her gentle aura filled Czanek’s head.
—Hurry up, Tom! We want to eat, please!
“Coming right up,” Tom said.
The massive hewer’s blade blurred down. The sister smiled. Tom’s new gift of strength made Besser’s job on Sladder look like child’s play: Czanek was shorn completely in half, from head to crotch. Between his feet, the blade struck the floor with such force that the entire building tremored.
Czanek’s body parted and fell in two cleanly cut pieces.
—
CHAPTER 18
Lydia remembered feeling afraid. She felt naive, puerile, inexperienced. She was an adult, a sexually mature woman, yet she felt like a child. The very next thing she knew, she was in the shower with him. That was the only word: afraid. But it wasn’t Wade she was afraid of, nor sex, nor closeness. It was herself.
The cool water rained down on her face. Wade stood behind her, sudsing her into a suit of slick lather. He did so very slowly. Lydia’s excitement began to unravel the instant his hands touched her skin. She’d forgotten what that felt like, to simply be touched…
Neither had said a word since they’d come into the shower. Lydia liked it that way—no talk, just the detailed hiss of the water and the sensation of his hands sudsing her body, beguiling her. This was a shocking luxury—being washed in the dreamy torrent, being so slowly and attentively felt. The contrast of warm lather and cool water made her nipples stand right up, right away. She was happy to feel, against her rump, that something of his was standing up too. Now his hands smoothed suds over her breasts. The slow, radiating pleasure was almost infuriating. He pressed her breasts together, offered them to the water. The suds sluiced off and left her flesh squeaky in his hands.
She felt the trail of suds course down her legs. More and more, Lydia felt thinly wired, like a rosined bowstring fit to snap. Wade’s hands slid up her hips; then the bar of soap glided brazenly into the cleft of her rump. The shock brought her up on her tiptoes.
Wade seemed to know that she could bear no more of this. He hugged her as he turned off the water, then he took her straight out. The room opened to them in cool darkness. They kissed belly to belly, dripping. The beads of water on her skin turned warm with her heat. Her open mouth sucked over his; their tongues frolicked. In the window she could see the moon, which seemed to watch like a distant face, or part of her past self.
Wade’s hands coaxed her buttocks apart and squeezed. His member (which she thought of unhesitantly as his cock) stood erect between their pressing bellies. Its hot underside throbbed. She longed to see its details, to witness its mysterious proof.
Next he straddled her on the bed. His strategy was agonizing: He kissed and licked every square inch of her body, from her lips to the tips of her toes—he dressed her in kisses. He traced her tan lines with his tongue. He sucked her nipples till they filled with a delicious ache. His mouth drew a wet line to her belly button, which he kissed, licked, and sucked with undue fascination.
Lydia felt stretched on an inquisitor’s rack when he began to kiss around the entirety of her sex; the sensation churned upward. Was she losing her mind from this? And what of him? She strained to grasp his cock, but it remained out of reach. For now she could only vow a dutiful reciprocation. Yes, she would tend to his cock as voraciously as he now tended to her. She would suck it till he came in her mouth, and that would only be the beginning.
These thoughts confounded her. Dirty girl, she thought. She wrapped her legs around his back. Yes, she would show him, once his cock was in reach. I don’t love this guy, do I? she dared to ask herself, but she could only think through chinks in the teasing frenzy. Then the wave began to rise. Oh, no. Oh—
Flexing spasms gathered and burst. A finger slipped in. She began to come at once when his mouth found the exposed nub of her clitoris. (She often thought that clitoris had to be the most ridiculous name devisable for the seat of feminine sexual pleasure.) The tongue licked up, bearing down. Moaning wasn’t Lydia’s style, yet she moaned just the same, writhing against the synchronicity of his tongue and mouth, which coaxed pulses of orgasms from her. Each beautiful release reminded her how long it had been since anything like this had happened to her. All she could do was lie there and come, give in to him. Yes, it had been a very long time indeed.