Michael Prescott - Shiver

She reached a narrow aisle between two rows of partitions and cut through it to the front of the room. The doorway to the hall was unguarded for the moment. She ran for it, gasping.

Then she was racing down the corridor toward the reception area a million miles away. She wouldn’t make it. Couldn’t. Once Rood realized she’d eluded him, he would be after her again. He needed only one clear shot.

A blurred shape came up fast and nearly tripped her. She looked down and saw the body of a security guard sprawled in an office doorway. A revolver lay beside him, its cylinder open, a scatter of. 38 cartridges near his outstretched fingers.

She stooped, grabbed the revolver and a handful of cartridges, and then gunfire boomed behind her.

She vaulted the guard’s body and landed on one knee inside the office. She twisted to her feet and looked around. The office was small and empty save for a dead man in a business suit slumped over his desk, facedown on a blotter soaking up Rorschach patterns of blood. She recognized him-he was named Brady, and he’d had something to do with client relations-but she had no time to think about that now.

There was no way out other than the door to the hall. She would have to make her stand here. At least she had a gun, but, oh, God, such a little gun, no match for that cannon of Rood’s. She looked at the cartridges in her hand. Three. That was all she’d had time to snatch. She tamped the rounds into the chambers, leaving three of the charge holes empty, and snapped the cylinder shut.

To have any hope of fighting back, she would have to ambush Rood somehow. She looked around and saw nowhere to hide except the obvious places. Inside the closet. Behind the desk. She looked up at the fluorescent lights, the checkerboard of acoustic ceiling panels.

Then she knew what she had to do.

Jamming the revolver into the waistband of her skirt, she climbed onto the desk.

Rood stopped a few yards from the office doorway. The bitch had a gun; he’d seen her grab it. He had to be cautious, very cautious. It would hardly be fair if he lost the game now.

He fed more shells into the magazine, worked the slide handle once, then crept toward the open door. Hugged the doorframe. Listened. Heard nothing, nothing anywhere, except some anonymous victim’s distant, dying moans.

With a high, warbling yell he pivoted into the doorway, straddling the dead guard, and opened fire.

The office window vanished in a haze of sparkling dust. A geyser of glass and mineral water erupted from what had been a water cooler. Rood blasted the desk, hoping the bitch was concealed behind it. The dead man was thrown upright as if shocked awake. His swivel chair spun gaily, and his necktie flapped like a dog’s lolling tongue.

Rood fired till the gun was empty, then stepped back and reloaded. Warily he entered the office, turning in a full circle. He saw a closet door and punched a gaping hole in it with another burst of buckshot. Then he kicked in the door and peered inside. The bitch wasn’t there.

Behind the desk, then. That was where she’d hidden.

He circled the desk, booting the swivel chair out of his way.

She wasn’t there either.

But it didn’t make sense. He’d seen her take cover in this room, and he hadn’t seen her leave. She had to be here someplace, dammit, simply had to be.

It had taken Wendy only a few seconds to push one of the large two-by-three ceiling panels out of its frame, then grab hold of the wooden beam behind it and hoist herself off the desk. There was a bad moment when she was sure she couldn’t do it, couldn’t pull her body all the way up. Then a fresh jolt of adrenaline recharged her muscles. Grunting with strain, she hauled herself onto the beam and lay flat on her stomach. She slid the panel back into place, leaving a narrow aperture to see through.

Seconds later Rood was demolishing the room. Glass and noise everywhere. She tugged the gun free of her waistband and held it in two shaking hands, the hammer cocked, muzzle pointing through the slot. She wanted to fire, but she didn’t trust her aim; she had to wait till he was closer.

Finally he seemed satisfied that he’d killed her. He looked first in the closet, then behind the desk. He shook his head slowly.

As she watched, he moved to the front of the desk, still glancing around, his head tilted quizzically.

He was almost directly beneath her. She would never have a better opportunity.

Do it, she ordered.

She took a breath, gritted her teeth, and squeezed the trigger.

Click.

The gun hadn’t fired.

An empty chamber-oh, Jesus-she’d hit one of the empty chambers.

Rood heard the faint metallic click and whirled. He stared up at the gap between two of the ceiling panels and saw the gun barrel poking out, the suggestion of a pale face behind it.

She was above him, the bitch, the fucking bitch.

He raised the shotgun.

Wendy saw the shotgun come up fast. She pumped the trigger a second time.

Click.

Come on, come on.

She had time for one more try.

Her index finger flexed once.

The shock of recoil nearly threw her off the beam. The gunshot rang in her ears like an explosion. Rood staggered, blood blossoming on his chest.

She fired again. Another bullet slammed into Rood’s chest and sent him reeling back. He collapsed on the floor, the shotgun flying from his grasp to boomerang into a corner, and then he just lay there, his glasses canted at a ridiculous angle, groaning and rolling his head from side to side like a child in the throes of a nightmare.

His raincoat fell open. Tucked in an inside pocket was a small clay gryphon.

Rood lay on his back, breathing hard. He tried to rise, couldn’t. The bitch had won this game, God damn her, and now there was nothing in his private universe but pain, and he found he didn’t like pain very much when it was his own.

The ceiling panel was kicked loose, and a moment later Wendy dropped down onto the desk. She hopped off and stood looming over him. The wind from the shattered window tossed her hair.

She aimed the revolver at him with both hands. The hammer snapped back.

“No,” Rood whispered, forcing speech like paste through frozen lips. “Don’t.”

“Why not?” Her voice was ice. “Give me one reason.”

He could think of no reasons, none at all, except that he couldn’t die this way, as the loser of the contest, as a failure. A failure.

“Please,” he moaned, hating to beg but afraid not to.

“I’ll tell you what.” She was smiling now, a smile like knives. “I may not shoot you again. I may let you live… if you’ll say some words for me. Some very special words. Will you?”

Fury seized him. This was his game she was playing. His ritual, not hers.

He almost refused. Almost told the bitch to go to hell.

Then dimly he became aware of sirens blaring in the distance. And he knew he had to go along, because if he could hold her off a little longer, the police would be here, and she couldn’t kill him then.

“All right,” he croaked.

“You’re most cooperative, Mr. Rood. I like that. Your chances of surviving this rendezvous are improving all the time. Now repeat after me: I have no power.”

“I have”-he winced as something tightened up inside him-“no power.”

“I’m not a god.”

“I’m not… not…” The words were hard to say. His tongue wouldn’t work right. He swallowed and tried again, tasting copper at the back of his mouth. “Not a… god.”

“I’m nothing. Nothing at all.”

A spasm rippled through his body. He coughed. Blood bubbled down his chin.

“I’m… I’m…”

His head reeled. The floor seemed strangely spongy, and he was sinking into it while the ceiling receded, the walls moving apart, everything turning white with an unreal shine. He closed his eyes, going away, not wanting to be here, not wanting to recite any more of these lies. If they were lies. Of course they were. They had to be. Had to be…