Scott Sigler - Nocturnal - A Novel

The guy had fired a shotgun. If Bryan hadn’t put him down, it could have been Lanza in the body bag. Or Pookie. Or Bryan himself.

Lanza, such an idiot. Maybe on the East Coast people respected the Mafia enough to give them leeway, but not out here. Jimmy the Hat had been a sharp cat. His son? Not so much. Frank and his buddies dressed up like they wanted the golden age of crime to come back overnight. Well, now they knew a different story.

Adrenaline had kept Bryan pumped from the shooting right up through the talk with the shrink. But during that whole time, his body had been sneakily breaking down. Once the buzz of excitement wore off, he’d felt completely wiped out.

Bryan pressed the button to call the rickety old elevator. Instead of a click and the whir of machinery, he heard nothing. Dammit — the elevator was broken again.

He pushed his body up the stairs, each step feeling like he was lifting someone else’s much-larger foot. He reached the fourth floor and paused. Muscle pain you could ignore. Most of it, anyway. Aches, throbbing, fever … but now he felt a new pain that demanded his attention.

A pain in his chest.

Bryan ground his teeth, then rubbed his hand hard against his sternum. Was he having a heart attack? No … it felt like it was a little above his heart. But what did he know about heart attacks? Maybe that’s where they started.

And then, suddenly, the pain faded away. He took a long, deep breath. Maybe he should call a doctor, but he was so damn tired.

It was probably nothing. Just the flu, messing with his system. Maybe he was more stressed about the shooting than he knew. If his chest felt like that the next day, he’d call a doc for sure.

Bryan walked into his apartment and started stripping off his weapons. He managed to remove most of his clothes before he crashed into his bed and fell asleep on top of his covers.

Fade In, Fade Out

The musty dampness of rotting cloth.

The stench of rancid garbage.

The pulsing heat of the hunt.

Two conflicting emotions fighting for dominance — the overpowering, electric taste of hatred juxtaposed against the pinching, tingling sensation of creeping evil.

Even as he hunted, something hunted him.

Bryan stood motionless, using only his eyes to track the prey.

One womb .

They hurt him. Just like the other one had.

We have waited so long .

Even through the blurry, nonsensical images, he recognized the street: Van Ness. Shifty streaks of people with indiscernible, blurred faces; moving swaths of fuzzy color that were cars; headlights and streetlights that made the fog glow.

Bryan watched his target, a target made up of abstract impressions of hazy crimson and dull gold, of wide shoulders and floppy blond hair, of scowling eyes made of evil.

Not a man … a boy . Big, but still young. The boy had a certain walk, a certain … scent .

Bryan wanted this boy dead.

He wanted them all dead.

One womb .

Hunting, but also … hunted. Bryan searched the skyline, looking for movement. Even as he did, he felt a deep, cold knowledge that he probably wouldn’t see death coming. He needed to make the mark, the mark that kept the monster at bay.

Bryan felt a tap on his shoulder. He sighed in frustration, knowing he could take the prey if only there weren’t so many people around. But he had another job to do — this target would have to wait.

Turning now. Moving. Everything a blur. Fade in, fade out. Refocused. Looking down at an alley. Must be high up. Looking down at a beat-up blue dumpster. Something behind the dumpster, mostly hidden from view, but not hidden from smell .

Bryan recognized this scent as well. Not as good as the boy, not as healthy. More … worn-out , but still good enough to make his stomach rumble. Bryan looked closer — a bit of red and yellow behind the dumpster. A blanket. A red blanket. The yellow looked like something familiar … a little bird …

Fade out, fade in, fade out again. The dream slipped away.

In his bed, Bryan turned once, opened his eyes and wondered where he was. The room’s darkness seemed a living thing, ready to sting him with blackened barbs. Sweat dripped from his face, soaked into his sheets.

His sheets. His bed. He was in his own apartment.

He’d left the dream, but the fear of the monster that hunted him came along for the ride. His chest hurt, far worse than it had on the stairs. Was that ache from dream-terror, or from the flu that made him burn and sweat?

Bryan reached out and turned on his nightstand lamp. He winced at the sudden light, but not for long.

He had to find some paper, find a pen.

He had to draw.

Rex Wakes Up

Rex Deprovdechuk woke up hot and sweating.

Excited. Terrified .

For a brief moment he remained lost in the dream’s power, his heart hammering, his breath short and fast. Then the aches faded back in like a vise slowly squeezing every part of his body. The pain, the fever … he’d never been this sick before.

His pants felt funny. He reached down and touched, felt something stiff . He pulled his hand back — what was that down there? Embarrassment swept over him, making his skin feel even hotter.

He had a boner .

He knew what boners were, of course. Kids at school talked about them all the time. People talked about them on TV. He’d even seen them in Internet porn. Seen them, sure, but he’d never had one. Watching porn hadn’t given him one. Neither had the girls at school. Rex had always known he was supposed to have them, yet they had never come. Nothing had ever turned him on before.

But the dream had.

He had been stalking Alex Panos, the biggest of the bullies who made Rex’s life hell. Stalking him, like a lion would stalk a zebra. The dream-smells still filled Rex’s nose — rotting cloth, garbage — and those conflicting feelings: burning rage against the bully, and mind-numbing fear of the thing lurking in the shadows.

One womb .

What a great dream. He’d almost jumped down from some building to attack that asshole Alex. Wouldn’t that have been great?

There had been other people in the dream, people who were hunting side by side with him. Two people … two people with strange faces. Dreams were crazy like that.

His dick throbbed so bad it hurt. It was a different kind of hurt than the sickness that overwhelmed his body. Growing pains , Roberta had told him. He still didn’t know about that. The pains had come out of nowhere just a couple of days ago. But maybe she was right — he’d just had his first boner ever, so maybe he was growing. Maybe he’d grow a lot and wouldn’t be the smallest freshman in the school anymore.

Maybe … maybe he’d get big enough to beat up the bullies.

The boner brought with it a huge wave of relief. In that way, at least, he was like the other boys.

Rex climbed out of bed, careful to move quietly lest the squeaky floorboards wake his mother. If Roberta woke up at this hour, it would be real bad.

He reached up and tenderly touched his nose. Still sore. That wasn’t from the body aches, it was from where Alex had punched him in the face yesterday. Just a little punch, and it had put Rex down. If Alex ever hit Rex as hard as he could …

Rex didn’t want to think about that. He walked to his desk and turned on his lamp. He had to draw a symbol he’d seen in the dream, something that he knew would make the fear fade away. He’d draw the symbol, and then something else — one of those strange faces he’d seen in the dream, a face that should have frightened him but did not.