J. Ward - Dark Lover

"Let me know how it goes."

Butch headed for the back. Before walking into room twenty-eight, he looked up and down the hall. It was quiet. There were no medical personnel around, no visitors, no patients.

He opened the door and put his head inside.

Billy Riddle looked up from the bed. There was a white bandage running under his nose like the thing was holding his brains in. "What's up, Officer? You find the guy who got me? I'm about to be released and I'd feel better knowing you had him in custody."

Butch shut the door and quietly flipped its lock.

He was smiling as he crossed the room eyeing the square cut sparkler in the guy's left lobe. "How's the nose, Billy boy?"

"Good. And the nurse was a piece of ass-"

Butch grabbed the front of the punk's blue polo shirt and yanked him to his feet. Then he slammed Beth's attacker against the wall so hard the machinery behind the bed wobbled.

Butch put his face so close they could have kissed. "Did you have fun tonight?"

Wide blue eyes met his. "What are you talking-"

Butch slammed him again. "I've got a positive ID on you. From the woman who you tried to rape."

"That wasn't me!"

"The hell it wasn't. And given your little threat about her tongue and your knife, I might even have enough to send you to Dannemora. You ever have a boyfriend before, Billy? I bet you're going to be popular. Nice white boy like you."

The guy went pale as the walls. "I didn't touch her!"

"Tell you what, Billy. If you're honest with me, and if you tell me where your buddy is, you might actually walk out of here. Otherwise I'm going to take you down to the station on a stretcher."

Billy seemed to consider the deal for a moment. And then the words came out of his mouth fast. "She wanted it! She was begging me-"

Butch brought up his knee and pressed it into Billy's crotch. A high-pitched yelp cut through the air. "Is that why you're going to have to piss sitting down for the next week?"

As the punk started babbling, Butch dropped him and watched him slide down onto the floor. When Billy saw the handcuffs come out, the whining got louder.

Butch flipped him over roughly and was none too gentle as he pulled the guy's wrists together. He clipped the cuffs in place. "You're under arrest. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney-"

"Do you have any idea who my father is!" Billy yelled, as if he'd gotten a second wind. "He's going to have your badge!"

"If you can't afford one, one will be provided for you. Do you understand these rights as I've stated them?"

"Fuck you!"

Butch palmed the back of the guy's head and pressed that busted nose into the linoleum. "Do you understand these rights as I've stated them?"

Billy moaned and nodded, leaving a smear of fresh blood on the floor.

"Good. Now let's get your paperwork done. I'd hate not to follow proper police procedure."

Boo! Would you cut that out?" Beth punched her pillow and rolled over so she faced the cat.

He looked at her and meowed. In the glow from the kitchen light she'd left on, she saw him paw at the glass door.

"Not likely, Boo-man. You're a house cat. House. Cat. Trust me, the big outdoors isn't as grand as it seems."

She closed her eyes, and when the next plaintive meow came, she cursed and threw off her sheet. She went to the door and stared outside.

That was when she saw the man. He was standing against the back wall of the courtyard, a dark shape much larger than the other, familiar shadows cast by the trash bins and the moss-covered picnic table.

With shaking hands she checked the lock on the door and then went to her windows. Both were locked as well. She pulled the shades down, grabbed her portable phone, and went back to stand over Boo.

The man had moved.

Shit!

He was coming toward her. She checked the lock on the door again and backed away, catching the edge of the futon with her foot. As she tumbled into space, the phone fell out of her hand and bounced away. She hit the mattress hard, head bobbing on her neck from the impact.

Impossibly, the door slid open as if the lock had never been turned, as if she'd never clicked it into place.

Still flat on her back, she pumped her legs wildly, knotting the sheets as she pushed her body away from him. He was tremendous, his shoulders wide as I beams, his legs as thick as her torso. She couldn't see his face, but the menace coming off him was like a gun aimed at her chest.

She whimpered as she rolled over on to the floor and crawled away from him, her knees and palms squeaking against the hardwood. His footsteps behind her landed like thunder, getting louder. Cowering like an animal, blinded by fear, she knocked into her hall table and felt no pain at all.

Tears streamed down her cheeks as she begged for mercy and reached for the front door-

Beth woke up, mouth open, a terrible noise shattering the dawn's silence.

It was her. She was screaming at the top of her lungs.

She clamped her lips together, and sure enough her ears stopped hurting. Shuffling out of bed, she went to the sliding door and greeted the sun's first rays with a relief so sweet she got light-headed. As her heart slowed, she took a deep breath and checked the door.

The lock was in place. The courtyard was empty. Everything was normal.

She laughed tightly. Of course she'd have a bad dream after what had happened last night. She was probably going to have the heebie-jeebies for a while.

She turned and headed for the shower. She felt half-dead, but the last place she wanted to be was alone in her apartment. She craved the bustle of the newsroom, wanted to be around all of its people, and phones, and papers. She'd feel safer there.

She was about to step into the bathroom when a lick of pain shot through her foot. She cocked her knee and picked a piece of pottery out of the tough skin of her heel. Bending down, she found the bowl she kept on the hall table in pieces on the floor.

Frowning, she cleaned up the mess.

She must have knocked the thing off when she'd first come home after the attack.

As Wrath walked down into the earth under Darius's man-sion, exhaustion followed. He closed and locked the door behind him, disarmed, and drew out a battered trunk from the closet. Flipping the lid back, he grunted as he lifted up a slab of black marble. It was four feet square and four inches thick, and he put it down in the middle of the room. He went back to the trunk, picked up a velvet bag, and tossed it on the bed.

Stripping down, he showered and shaved, then walked back into the room naked. He grabbed the bag, untied the satin ribbon at its neck, and poured out the rough-cut, pebble-sized diamonds onto the slab. The empty satchel fell from his hand and floated down to the floor.

Wrath bowed his head and spoke the words of his mother tongue, the syllables rising and falling with his breath as he paid tribute to his dead. When he finished speaking, he knelt down onto the slab, feeling the stones cut into his flesh. He settled his weight back on his heels, placed his palms on his thighs, and closed his eyes.

The death ritual required him to pass the day without moving, to bear the pain, to bleed in memory of his friend.

In his mind he saw Darius's daughter.

He shouldn't have gone inside of her home like that. He'd scared her half to death, when all he'd wanted to do was introduce himself and explain why she was going to need him soon. He'd also planned to tell her he was going after that human male who'd fucked with her.

Yeah, he'd handled it beautifully. Smooth as gravel.

The moment he'd come inside, she'd bolted in terror and he'd had to strip her memories and put her in a light trance to calm her down. After he'd laid her out on her bed, he'd meant to leave right away, but he hadn't been able to. He'd stood over her, measuring the blurry contrast between her black hair and her white pillowcase, breathing in her scent.