Blood Red

Chapter 12

The sun wasn’t up yet, and Jason was sleeping beside her, nearly completely motionless. Her body ached, but in the nicest ways. The man was definitely imaginative.

Technically it was morning now, and she had things to do. She rose from the bed and looked down on his sleeping form. He was handsome. He was also very strange. She liked him. He was charming and pleasant and very attentive. He was also filthy stinking rich.

She stepped over to her strapless black number and pulled it back on, starting at her feet and working it up to her chest.

Jason turned over in the bed and looked at her. He had a smile on his face. “Time to leave already?”

She smiled back, looking into his eyes in the faint light. He had lovely eyes, dark and deep. “If you don’t mind, handsome. I have classes in a few hours.”

“I don’t mind. Thank you for the company.” He stretched and she watched the muscles play across his torso. He looked almost soft when he was clothed, but once in the nude he was sinewy and powerful.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course. Anything you’d like.”

“Not that I’m complaining, but why all the priests and such?”

He chuckled. “For now I’ll simply say that they needed to relax. Ask me again after we are together again.”

“We’ll be together again?”

“If you’ll have me, yes.”

“I’ll keep you to your word on the final answer, you know that, right?”

“I would be disappointed if you did not, Maggie.”

She leaned over and gave him a kiss on his lips. Once again that strange flavor was in her mouth and she tasted it in his breath. He kissed her deeply and distracted her with his tongue a few seconds later. When he broke the kiss he smiled at her. “You had best leave if you plan on getting away from me, Maggie.”

He was fully aroused, but not being an ass about it. She smiled down at him and slid back out of her dress. He lay back and let her take control of the situation.

The sun was up before they were finished. She didn’t mind and he was most certainly not complaining. The drive home was a quiet one. Even the early morning traffic was feeling pretty subdued. She liked it like that, too. She wanted to get home and shower and get ready for school.

She got home.

But the rest of the day failed to turn out the way she had planned for it to go.

The sun was going to be coming up soon. Ben had thought about drinking, but somehow he never quite got around to picking up a bottle. It was too much effort.

So he sat in the darkness and listened to the night and thought long and hard about his life. So far, it was mostly uneventful. He was at peace with that.

So Maggie had an unusual choice for a career. So what? He was more worried about someone trying to hurt her than her having sex.

Well, most of him. Part of him was depressed as hell about it. But that wasn’t important. It wasn’t his life and he had no claims to make. He just wished he did.

“Grow the fuck up, loser.”

“Talking to yourself, Ben?” The last thing he’d expected to hear was Tom Pardue’s voice.

He turned his head and spotted the blond ape in Maggie’s doorway. Tom was smiling.

“I didn’t know there was anyone else here to talk to.” He shrugged.

“Well, here I am.” Tom was smiling. He had a very unpleasant smile.

“I don’t think Maggie’s home, Tom.”

“Yeah. I know. She’s probably not gonna be back tonight.”

Ben nodded. “Well, I think I’m going to call it a night. I have class in five hours.”

Tom slid two feet in his direction and leaned against his door. “You know what? I was thinking we should have a talk, you and me.”

“What about?” He was doing a damned fine job of not panicking. At least in his own estimation.

“About Maggie.” Tom was smiling again.

He shrugged. “Sure, talk.”

“Well, I think maybe you got a little upset earlier, when you heard what she does.”

“I was a little surprised, maybe. Yeah, I guess I was surprised.”

“I can get that. Here’s the thing though. You don’t tell anyone about her,” the man shrugged as he spoke. “She’s a private girl.”

“I wasn’t planning on telling anyone, Tom. It’s not their business and it’s not my business.”

“Good boy.”

“Are we done? I have school in a few hours.”

“Almost. I just need to make sure we really understand each other, okay?”

Before Ben could respond, Tom landed a fist in his solar plexus and knocked the wind from his body. Ben had never been a fighter. He didn’t have any plans on becoming one, either. He dropped to his knees and tried to suck in a breath, but it didn’t happen.

Tom helped him along with a knee across his cheek. Ben was already seeing constellations when his head rebounded off the door. That was pretty much all she wrote on the subject. Ben fell flat against the ground, the ringing in his head enough to make him wonder if he’d been permanently damaged.

The ugly blond giant with the acne scars leaned down and appraised his condition. Apparently he wasn’t quite satisfied with his handiwork, because he kicked Ben in the ribs, and then in the stomach, the crotch, and the upper thigh.

“I’m glad we had this chance to talk, Ben. I feel much better about the situation than I did before.” He crouched over Ben and looked down at him with malignant eyes. “Remember, it’s our little secret. But you know what? Just to show there are no hard feelings, I can give you a night with Maggie for half-price. Would you like that?”

The nausea rolled through his stomach and mingled with the agony in his testicles.

“You give it some thought. Trust me, she’s an amazing fuck.”

Ben closed his eyes, wishing he could come up with a properly obnoxious retort, and settling instead for not puking out his spleen. His eyes stayed closed until Maggie woke him up.

“Shit, Ben.” She was looking down at him, her eyes worriedly checking the damage to his face and head. “What happened to you?”

“Tom came by. We talked.”

“That prick. He’s a fucking animal.” She took his arm and helped him sit up. The axis of the universe didn’t completely fall away, but it sure felt to Ben like it wanted to. He coughed several times and leaned his head back against the door, hoping he wouldn’t make himself look like more of a loser and hurl. “Come on, let’s get you inside.” She offered her hands and he took them. Maggie pulled and he leaned into it, letting her give him the much-needed boost.

A few minutes later she was helping him to his bedroom again. “We gotta stop meeting like this.” He broke a smile and looked at her face, her perfect face, now marred by her anger. “People are gonna talk.”

“Shut up,” she was smiling as she said it. “I’m trying to stay pissed off.”

“Okay. Shutting up now.” He sat down hard on the bed and felt the room spin a bit.

“You don’t look good. I’m gonna call you an ambulance.”

“No. Don’t do that. They’ll have to tell the cops.”

“So?”

“You don’t need the grief if I talk to the cops.” He lay back on his bed and clutched at the sides of the mattress to make the spinning go away. “I just need to rest.”

“Why would there be trouble for me if you talked to the police?”

She wasn’t getting it. He wasn’t really in the mood to discuss it with her. So he closed his eyes, and a few moments later he was asleep again.

Some plans don’t work out the way you want them to, no matter how good they look on paper. Brian Freemont knew that going into his excursion to the campus, but he’d tried anyway and met with resounding failure.

He hadn’t figured that at a potted ivy university like Winslow Harper he would have trouble finding just one of the girls he’d had celebrations with before. He was mistaken. If any of his previous conquests were there, they were doing a great job of not being seen. The closest he came to finding a familiar face was the girl from the church the morning before, and while he wanted to get to know her better, he also didn’t think he could intimidate that one. Maybe if he was in uniform, but not in his street clothes. And there was something weird about her: every time he saw her, there were crows all over the place.

So after spending most of the day on the campus and looking at what he could not touch, he’d decided to call it a day and head off for a couple of beers. Half a keg or so later at the Rusty Scupper, he ran across Boyd and Holdstedter, the detectives on his wife’s case, as they were coming into the restaurant with the homicide detectives, Bob Longwood—the walking mountain—and Nancy Whalen, who was still on Brian’s list of most fuckable cops.

He smiled at them as he was heading for the door.

As an afterthought he looked at Boyd and said, “Heard you had another disappearance.”

“Yeah, we did.” Boyd pinned him to the wall with his eyes. For a short little guy, he had a lot of attitude. “But we also found the body of one of our missing college students, so it’s all balancing out.”

Somewhere a roller coaster was dropping the apex of its first hill at high speed: Brian’s stomach felt like it was in the front seat of that roller coaster. The beer he’d been drinking through the last few hours mingled with his steak dinner and threatened a violent rebellion.

“Really? Well, that’s great. Not for the girl, of course, but wonderful.”

Boyd looked at him for three heartbeats without saying a word, and then he smiled. There was nothing friendly or jovial about the way Boyd’s lips pulled into a curl. “Yeah, the best part is, the perp left evidence.”

“Really?” Forget roller coasters; his stomach lurched hard to the left and then to the right before it decided to just quiver and churn.

“Yeah,” Boyd nodded and Brian was vaguely aware of the other three detectives looking at him, and each and every one of them was smirking; little I-know-a-secret expressions on their faces. “The moron left a condom behind. Just chock-full of nice, genetic tests waiting to happen.” The detective came closer, and looked up into his eyes. “I got a rush job put on it, ’cause I think I’m close to getting this one solved.”

All the happy had officially been drained out of Brian’s day, and his stomach decided enough was enough: he muttered an “excuse me” to the detectives and ran for the men’s room at high speed. He shoved the door open, knocking the man on the other side off his feet, and before he could apologize he was on his hands and knees in the room and vomiting across the tiles and the legs of the man he’d run down.

The man was understandably upset. “Jesus Christ!” He pushed himself back across the tiles with an expression of disgust plastered across his face.

Someone chuckled from the doorway behind him, but Brian was far too busy to bother with the distraction. His stomach seemed determined to remove every last iota of food and drink he’d had since graduating high school.

“You’re a mess, Freemont,” Holdstedter’s voice was not at all sympathetic. “Call a cab. I see you get into your car and I’ll lock you in cuffs myself.”

“Uhhh,” the voice came from near the sink. “This freak is a cop?” Brian looked at the man standing up in front of him. He was busily pulling off his blue jeans and soaking the vomit-crusted legs in the sink. A pair of bright pink boxers adorned his hips and hid the upper portion of his hairy legs; his reflection was glaring at Brian. There wasn’t a part of the exposed skin that wasn’t covered with a pelt of black hair, except for his face and the top of his head, which gleamed in the bright lights.

“Yes, sir. He is. Not his proudest moment, or ours, either.”

“No kidding?” Sarcasm made the vomit victim’s voice even more nasal. “What’s your captain’s name?”

“O’Neill, sir. James O’Neill.”

“Well, Captain O’Neill can expect a call. I don’t know if there are charges I can file, but I’m definitely filing a complaint.” The man was pissed and not at all thrilled about wringing his jeans out.

“Technically, I could book him for Drunk and Disorderly if you wanted.” Holdstedter was being very professional, very helpful. Brian wanted him dead.

From a considerable height advantage, the civilian looked down at him and a smile that was far too similar to Boyd’s spread across his face. “Yeah. Do that. Bust him. Please.”

Holdstedter looked down at him, too, and was reaching for his cuffs. “You go right ahead and wash up, Freemont. Then we’re gonna take a ride.”

As it turned out, the detective did not actually haul Brian off to the processing center. He saved that for a couple of the beat cops he called to the scene.

The four detectives were all watching him as he was taken away. None of them laughed, but all of them were still smiling at him.

Life sucked.

He was released from the drunk tank at ten A.M. He was home half an hour later. He showered and shaved and then went back to sleep.

The official reprimand was waiting for him on Captain O’Neill’s desk when he got to work.

Life sucked royally.

Alan Tripp woke up in a hospital room. His chest felt like it was on fire and his hand was a shrieking symphony of pain. A male nurse was looking at him with wide blue eyes, and as soon as he woke up, the man moved over to take his pulse and blood pressure. He didn’t know why the man was bothering: there was already a heart monitor and cuff attached to his left arm. He could hear the constant, steady beeps that mirrored the beating of his heart.

“How are you feeling, Mr. Tripp?” Friendly and professional, just like the ones that dealt with him when Avery was born.

Avery. Thinking about his son made the room swim into clearer focus. “I’m fine,” he lied. He was far from that particular state of existence. He doubted he’d ever be anywhere near fine again.

“There are some police officers who would like to talk to you.” The man looked at him with sympathy. “Do you feel up to talking to them?”

No. No, he did not feel up to talking to the fucking police. He felt like crawling under the hospital bed and dying. “Sure.”

Detectives Boyd and Holdstedter came into the room a few minutes later, both of them looking freshly scrubbed and well rested. They introduced themselves and the blond one poured him a Styrofoam cup full of deliciously cold water.

“Can you tell us what happened at your house, Mr. Tripp?” The shorter of the two men asked the question, his face almost masklike.

“My son killed my wife and then ran away with her body.”

Detective Boyd’s voice was doubtful. “Your son Avery?” He recognized the man. It had taken a moment for him to connect the pissed-off detective he’d seen during the search for Avery with the soft-spoken man standing in front of him now.

“Yes. Avery did it. I saw him.”

“Do you have any idea why?”

“I think he was feeding on her.”

Both detectives stared at him in horrified silence for at least half a minute. He understood how they felt.

Finally Holdstedter spoke up. “Feeding on her? He was eating her flesh?”

“I don’t know. She was dead, her blood was all over her neck and the bed and his mouth and I think he was eating Meghan.” He heard the sound of his voice rising, scaling up in octaves and volume alike, but he didn’t seem to have any control over the words or volume. All of the horror of the previous night crawled back into his mind and left him ready to scream, so he did. “My little boy killed her and started eating her fucking neck, detective! He had blood all over his mouth and down on his shirt and his goddamned teeth were pink with it!”

The whole room went dark red, shading to near black at the edges of his vision. The two detectives looked at him with doubtful expressions and his excitement grew in leaps and bounds. “He wasn’t Avery, but he looked like him! He was too strong! No one is that strong, you hear me? No one in the world is that strong! I tried to choke him to death and he bitch-slapped me! That goddamned freak threw me out a window!”

Somewhere near his left side the heart monitor was beeping erratically, and his vision went darker still, redder, more like the color of his wife’s life as it drained all over the bed.

He was irritated by the sound of the monitor so he reached out and slapped at the thing, doing little more than bruising his fingertips. He grunted and reached for it again, this time pushing the device and the attached IVs to the ground. The needle in his arm pulled free and he barely even noticed. It was just one more pain and it didn’t matter, not anymore… nothing mattered except that he find his son and punish him for what he’d done to Meghan. He had to know where her body was and where Avery’s body must surely be, because there was no way that Avery had done what he knew the boy had done.

The nurse reached for him to calm him down and Alan screamed at the man for his efforts. “Get away from me! I want Meghan! I want Avery! You find them goddamn you!”

He looked toward Boyd and reached for the man to shake him to make his case clear. He wanted his family back because something was wrong around these parts.

His hands touched the lapels of the detective’s jacket and were knocked away hard and fast. Before he could grab a second time the other detective was on him, wrenching his hands away from the shorter one and pulling them behind his back.

It didn’t matter. None of it did. Alan laughed, because he couldn’t make the words come out anymore, and he flexed, pulling his arms free from the larger man’s grip. He was still turning to face the blond when Holdstedter’s fist slammed into his face and knocked him off his feet.

He was still screaming and laughing and crying out his frustrations when the two men pinned him to the ground and called for restraints. The blood had soaked through his bandaged hand, and the sight of the dark red oozing through the cotton was enough to send him over the edge. He kicked Holdstedter in the balls, and swung his body around, determined to get out of the room and the building so he could find his family and bring them back together.

He didn’t want any of this, didn’t want to piss off the cops or hurt anyone, but his mind was screaming signals at him that didn’t make sense and he couldn’t stop himself.

Boyd stopped him instead. Alan fought back for several seconds as the detective slipped in behind him and got him into a chokehold. He was still fighting all the way back into unconsciousness.

“He’s a mental case. Elementary school kids do not go around eating their mothers.”

“He kicks like a mule.”

“I wouldn’t know. I kept my balls away from him.”

“Love the sympathy, man.” Danny was walking like he’d been horseback riding for the last week.

“Oh, I got sympathy for you. I’m not even gonna tell the girls who give you the eye that your nuts are broken.” They stepped out of the hospital and into the parking deck. Boyd reached for a cigar.

“You’re all fuckin’ heart.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m an old softy.” He plunked the cigar into his mouth and ruminated on it for a few minutes as they walked.

“Something happened to him. He wasn’t like this last week.”

“You see his hand?”

“The bloody one?”

“Yeah, Danny, the bloody one. I watched when they changed the bandages.”

“I was a little busy trying to find my testicle.”

“You get that taken care of okay, did you?”

“Yeah, they’re both there now.”

“Anyway. He got the shit bit out of his hand. Either he was killing his wife or son and they bit him, or one of them went crazy.”

“He didn’t kill his wife or son. I’d put money on that and kiss Whalen’s husband.”

“You going all sweet on Nancy’s husband, Danny?”

“Not as sweet as you are on Nancy.”

“Shut your mouth. That sort of shit just causes troubles.”

“It’s mutual. I thought she was gonna crawl under the table and give you a hummer right in the fucken restaurant.”

“Nothing ever happened. Nothing ever will. Now shut up about it.”

“He still didn’t kill his wife.”

“He never let the doctors finish checking out his boy. What does that say?”

“That he wanted his son safe and at home and resting.”

“I dunno. Maybe, maybe not.”

“So let’s pretend that I’m a detective too, Rich.”

“Oh, you’re a detective.” He shot Danny a look. “You’re a damned good one, too. I just don’t know if I agree with you.”

“So we get some pictures of the hand wound, see if they took any before they started sewing it up, and see if the marks match any dental records for the kid or the mom. Maybe someone else broke into the house.”

“I’m pretty sure someone did.”

Danny looked at him and stopped moving. “So what makes you call him crazy?”

“He is crazy. He kicked a cop in the balls. That’s crazy.”

“But you don’t think he attacked his own family? Why?”

“Because I looked at the window while you were checking out the bedroom. Somebody big hit that glass hard, and he had glass all in his hair. I think he got pushed or thrown out that window.”

“Maybe it was his son. Maybe somebody drugged the kid with PCP or something.”

“Could be, he was gone for a couple of days. Anything could have happened to him.”

They walked the rest of the way to the car in silence, each lost in their own little processes for working on puzzles.

“We gonna bust Freemont today?”

“Only if the lab gets those results to us.” Danny started toward the driver’s side door of the car and Boyd pushed in front of him. “Uh, no. I got the driving.”

“What? I always drive.”

“Not when your balls are still recovering. I want you able to think and relax.”

“Careful, Richie. I might think you actually care.”

“Hey, I do care. You’re my buddy. You’re lousy in a fight, but you’re still my pal.” He sucked and puffed at his cigar until his head was surrounded by a halo of smoke. Then he climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine. “I want to go to the Cliff Walk.”

“Yeah? Why this time?”

“They live right near there. I want to see if maybe you’re right and somebody is dumping bodies there.”

“Jelly. I’m telling you, Richie, they’re all dead and jelly on the rocks.”

“You’re sick and obsessed.”

“You’re short and a bitch.”

“Maybe, but I ain’t your bitch.”

“No. You’re Whalen’s bitch, and her husband’s if he ever finds out about you two.”

“There’s nothing to find out.”

“Yet.”

“Fuck you.”

“No way, my balls hurt too much.”

Ben woke up with Maggie in the bed next to him. She was asleep, her face highlighted with shades of gold by the afternoon sun. His jaw hurt, his ribs ached, and his entire side felt like someone had parked a car on it, and he didn’t care in the least. He spent almost ten minutes looking at her, studying her, loving the way she looked while she slept.

Loving her. That was the problem here. He wasn’t supposed to love her. Even if he was, he sure as hell didn’t expect her to love him back.

That part he got right at least. It was sweet of her to stay, to make sure he was all right through the night, but he wasn’t about to read anything into it.

Her hair was a wild mess of curls, half of which fell across her face and hid the curves and edges of her cheek and jaw. Her lips were just slightly parted and he could see the white of her teeth as she breathed in and out softly.

There was a strong desire to lean over and kiss her awake. There was also a desperate need to drain his bladder. He let common sense override his desires and climbed carefully out of the bed.

Ten minutes later he was brewing coffee. Five minutes after that, he was whipping eggs into froth and chopping ham. He didn’t have any fresh mushrooms, so the canned ones would have to suffice.

He tried for an omelet; he got scrambled eggs with cheese, ham, and canned mushrooms. After that, he set the concoction on a plate, poured a cup of coffee and added the same amount of milk and sugar he’d seen Maggie add at the restaurant; it was enough sugar to put most people into a diabetic coma.

She was sitting up in his bed when he got back to the room. Maggie smiled a good morning to him and reached for the coffee gratefully as he set it down.

“Good morning.” He smiled and savored the look of her for a second before heading back into his kitchen for his plate.

“You coming back?”

“Yeah.” He did, carrying a plate identical to hers, but with five times as much sugar in the coffee.

“How are you feeling?” She sipped and looked over the lip of the mug at him.

“Better,” he shrugged. “My face doesn’t hurt that much, at least.” He sat at the foot of the bed, and set his plate down. “Thanks for staying.”

“Well, it was sort of my fault.”

“No. It wasn’t.”

“If you didn’t know me, he wouldn’t have done that.”

“He would have. He said it was nothing personal, just business.”

“Did he say why?”

“So I wouldn’t tell anyone what you do.”

She started as if he’d slapped her. “He told you?” Her voice had dropped an octave; what came from her mouth was a sultry whisper that was purely unintentional.

“No. I sort of found out when the police were questioning me about Brian Freemont.”

Maggie looked at the wall, her lower lip trembling a bit. She was angry, he could see that, but she was also humiliated and embarrassed.

“Maggie.”

She didn’t respond; she was still looking through the wall.

“Maggie. Look at me.”

The glare she fired at him would have withered steel. Normally he would have been backing away in terror. This was different.

“Maggie, it’s okay. I’m not going to tell anyone.”

“Maybe I didn’t want you to know. Did you think of that?”

“So pretend I don’t.”

“It doesn’t work that way, Ben, and you know it.”

“It does if you want it to.”

“I’m sitting here thinking I’ve finally got a friend, you know? Someone I can just be myself with, and he pulls this shit!” The mug went flying as her hands went to her face.

There are a thousand acts of courage committed every day that will never be catalogued as the actions of heroes. There are people who face the world as little as possible and for whom the act of going to the grocery store is a monumental feat. There are children who deal with their worst fears every single time they get onto a school bus and face another day where no one cares about them and the bullies are always waiting. For Ben Kirby, the very idea of touching Maggie was an act of courage. She was his ideal and she was the only one he’d let close to him in a long time.

He reached out and put his arms around her, leaning his chin into her hair. She resisted at first. She tried to push him away, but he wouldn’t let her.

Finally she relented and let herself be hugged. A few moments later she even hugged back.

“I don’t think any differently now.”

She laughed bitterly into his chest. “What? You always thought I was a whore?”

“Nope. Always thought you were quiet and nice to look at.”

“Liar.”

“It’s just a job. It gets the bills paid.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying.”

“Well, you’re right.”

She stayed there for a few more seconds and Ben closed his eyes, savoring her presence the way he always did. Perhaps he would have eventually gotten up the courage to tell her he loved her, but really, it wasn’t very likely.

Only one act of courage per day, please. We have to keep up our standards.

Kelli Entwhistle awoke in a silent house for the first time since she’d moved in with the Listers. There was no sound from the Listers’ master bedroom. Normally there would have been at least the noise of the alarm clock or the shower running.

She spent the rest of the day feeling unsettled by the experience. She still half expected Teddy to come bounding into her room to wake her, even though he’d stopped doing that around the age of eight.

When school was done, she went back to the house and cleaned it from top to bottom. She even entered the master bedroom, despite her fear that she would find a bloodied shirt, or some sign that something had happened to Michelle.

There was nothing.

Ten minutes after she’d finished cooking herself dinner, the phone rang. She answered it, fully expecting to hear her employer’s voice. It was Lori Sinclair who spoke. Lori was a nice enough woman but had all the actual brain power of a gnat. Most of her energies were focused solely on being perky.

“Hi, Kelli! It’s nice to hear from you. I was just calling to double-check on the whole Halloween Block thing. You said you could take a clutch of kids trick-or-treating and I wanted you to know I’ve got you set up with ten, plus your own, of course. I can’t talk right now, busy, busy, busy, but I’ll get hold of you in a couple of days, okay? Thanks! You’re a love, bye!”

The phone clicked in her ear, a warning that Lori was now gone and on to the next phone call.

“Fuck.” She’d forgotten all about Halloween. Lori either hadn’t heard or had forgotten that Kelli’s charge was out of the scene. And damn, didn’t that start her wanting to cry again.

“Okay, so maybe I should do it anyway. The kids still need to be watched, and I could use a chance to get out of the house.” She leaned back in her seat and thought about it. There were some sweet kids out in the area and she liked kids. She genuinely did, which never ceased to amaze her friends from school.

“It could be fun. I’ll call the girls and we’ll get it going on and maybe even dress up ourselves.” She smiled. “Then there’re some parties to hit. So, yeah, I’ll do it.” She looked around and exhaled. “Christ, I’m talking to myself again.”

The room did not answer her.

Michelle Lister never made it home. She had court for most of the day and then she had a meeting with another client, and after that she needed to dig into the legal research her interns had dragged up for her; the proper destruction of a hospital took effort.

Make no mistake about it: the entire situation was extremely personal. Her only child, a boy she loved as much as she had ever loved anything in her life, was dead. She knew that. She felt it in her heart. She let Kelli stay, of course, because the girl was practically family after the last few years, and it would have been wrong to turn her out.

And it would have been lonely. The damned house was always too big and now, well, now it was just plain monstrous. If Bill was indeed dead—a thought she tried not to let creep into her mind because, like the house, it was too big—then she would sell the house and move somewhere else, somewhere smaller without any of the emotional luggage.

For now, however, she was busy, and that meant she would have to wait a while to discuss everything with Kelli. Dinner was a double cheeseburger and fries; she ate while she drove and called to her assistants to get the paperwork ready. They were jumping hard and fast to keep Michelle happy right now, not only because of her losses, but also because her temper was legendary at the offices.

She spent three hours going over the papers and making her own notes. Tomorrow she would have them typed up and properly filed. For now it was enough to get everything ready.

After that, when she realized she had spent the day in a frenzy and might actually be able to sleep, she started for home. The air was thick outside: sometime after she’d gone to the offices, the weather had changed. Heavy ground fog slipped along the edges of the buildings and across the road like phantom waves, shifted by the wind. The air was colder too, and she felt a shiver run up her spine as the misty weather crept through her clothes.

“I hate this damn town.” She moved over to the car and double-checked to make sure that no one was lurking around the building. College towns could get weird at night and lately this one was worse than usual. Too many disappearances, too many strangers, too many people who could be a threat.

Not enough family left.

She let herself think for a second and that was a mistake. Just like that, everything washed over her again, Teddy and Bill and everything. If Bill really was gone and the last thing she’d said to him was to accuse him of sleeping around— which he hadn’t done, but it always pissed him off—she would never forgive herself.

The tears started a few seconds later and despite her best efforts they wouldn’t leave her alone. Her eyes were dripping like a bad sink and she hated it.

“Screw this!” She wiped the wet works away with her palms and opened the car door. If she was going to turn into a bawling baby she was going to do it in the comfort of her own home, no matter how little comfort it provided.

The radio went up to a little lower than deafening and she popped in her Police CD. Sting always helped make her feel a little better.

Then she was on the road and heading for home. Sting was talking about a Scottish Loch and she was letting herself start to unwind, to get a little tension undone, when she saw the flash of movement up ahead in the fog.

She tapped the brakes because, for just a second that looked like…

“Teddy?”

Her heart stuttered, it shivered inside of her chest. She came to a complete stop and climbed out of the car. “Teddy? Are you out there?”

“Mommy?” His voice! Oh, Jesus, his VOICE! She didn’t stop to think, she merely ran. Behind her the idling car moved forward, slowly gathering speed as it moved away. She was aware of the problem, but couldn’t let herself think about a car: her son was up ahead, out in the darkness of the woods.

“Mommy? I’m scared!”

“Baby! Momma’s coming!” Her heel broke and she kicked the shoe off irritably as she moved off the road and into the woods. “Momma’s coming honey, where are you?”

“Mommy!”

She turned and saw him as he dropped from the air like an angel on wings. His hair streamed around his sweet face, a red-blond halo illuminated by the dwindling taillights of the car.

How did he learn to fly?

The car left the road, thudding and bumping its way across the ground and coming to rest against a thick oak tree with an audible crunch.

Teddy dropped into his mother’s arms and she cried out in an ecstasy of joy. His skin was so cold in the fog, so damp, that she had a brief horrifying notion that she was touching a corpse. But dead children couldn’t move, couldn’t smile with such beauty as you pulled them closer. He smelled the way a little angel should smell: of the sea breeze and the sand.

“Mommy!” God, just hearing him, touching him was all she ever needed to be complete. She realized that now, after she had almost lost him. She’d given up, had even thought—

“Oh my God, Teddy,” her voice, usually so calm and in command, broke and she let it, the tears falling freely from her eyes as she hugged him fiercely. “Oh my baby, I thought you were dead! I thought I’d never see you again,” she cried, pressing her hot face against his shoulder and neck and braying out her joy without any inhibitions.

His delicate little hands moved into her hair and he whispered sweetly into her ear, “Mommy, I missed you.”

“Don’t you ever leave me again, baby. Don’t you dare ever run away again.”

“I won’t, Mommy. We’ll be together forever. You and me and Daddy.”

“Your father?” The cold came back, the void opened again beneath her as she struggled with the words that would make him hurt less when he heard them. Bill was dead; he had to be dead, because his shoe was left behind.

“Daddy will be with us. Here he comes now.” Teddy’s voice sounded wrong, teasing, like when he waited for her to open his present to her at Christmas. It was both a wonderful sound and an oddly chilling one.

“Honey, about your daddy…”

“What about me?” Bill’s voice was in her ear, directly behind her, but she’d never heard him approach and never felt his breath touch her skin. Cold, hard hands slipped across her shoulders, massaging her flesh. She shivered at the touch and tried to turn her face to see if it really was Bill she felt. He pressed his body against her, his hands gripping harder than before, and she felt his excitement as he pushed still harder against her, pinning her in place.

“Bill? What the hell… where have you been?” She tried to stay calm, but her voice was shaken, her heart trying to find a rhythm it was comfortable with.

“I had to find Teddy, didn’t I?” His lips were against her ear, a soft cold whisper of flesh against flesh. Bill had always loved to nibble her ears during foreplay. The thought chilled her as much as the feel of his cold flesh pressing to her. “We have to be a family again, Michelle. We have to be together.”

Teddy’s hands were still in her hair and they clenched suddenly, hard powerful little grips that pulled her face up until she could look at him. See him for the first time. In the near darkness, his eyes were aglow, lit by fires the color of winter moonlight. His skin was sallow, pasty white. His teeth were bared in a smile that had nothing to do with joy or love or compassion. And then he leaned down as fast as a striking cobra and his teeth were biting, tearing into her flesh.

Michelle screamed, with the sudden and unbearable pain that was second only to the understanding that this was not her son. Teddy bit deeper, his cold face pressed to her neck and his tongue digging at the incisions he made, penetrating and tasting her life.

Bill bit her too, his mouth on the other side of her throat. The pain was worse by far, as his teeth punctured her skin, her muscles. His hands slid down and cupped her breasts in a sick mockery of the love they’d known, no matter how cold and distant it had become.

Michelle struggled. She fought and she pushed and she screamed loudly enough to hear her voice echo off the nearby trees. The darkness was almost complete, and even her car was too distant to bring a hope that someone would come and stop the insanity. Michelle cried and begged her family to leave her in peace.

That was not an option for her husband and child. They wanted what they always wanted: to be a family again.

One big, happy family.