The Night Crew

Chapter 17

The two-faced man was covered with bloodhis own bloodrunning down his face and arms. He licked at it, and the blood was both sweet and salty on his tongue; but his face was on fire.

The wounds hurt, but didn't really matter: what mattered was the failure. The explosion of his dreams.

Anna didn't want him.

And he'd run like a chicken.

He'd felt real fear: Anna had come after him like a madwoman, and he thought for a moment that she'd pull him down. If the others had gotten there, they would have lynched him.

The humiliation hurt worse than the bitealthough the bite hurt badly enough. He gagged in pain, pressed the palm of his hand to his cheek.

Still. He would heal. But the memory of thrashing up the hill, being chased by this small woman. that memory wouldn't go away. He'd remember that forever.

He'd gone to her expecting recognition. He'd eliminated the others. Hadn't that proven something? Didn't that give him some rights? He'd expected resistance, but then, he thought, she'd see the fire, feel the steel, and she'd come with him.

She'd slept with other men. He didn't like it, but he accepted it. He also knew that the others didn't love her: they simply used her. Jason O'Brien, Sean MacAllister, her driver, Creek. Users. Takers.

He'd goneto her; virtually begged her.

He flashed back to the sex: he'd bent her over the car, had been plucking at her pants, and suddenly, from the friction of the contact, the excitement, he'd ejaculated.

He remembered that without pleasure; because he also remembered running frantically across the parking lot, his penis protruding from his pants, wobbling around like a crazed-comic compass pointer, leading him into the brush.

He'd managed to tuck himself back inside before he hit the thorn trees, or he'd really have been hurt.

Had she seen that? Were she and her bodyguard off somewhere, laughing about it?

He closed his eyes: Of course they were. He could feel it.

And quick as that, love turned to hate; as it had with his teacher, Mrs Garner. As it had with a kitten that scratched.

He' d have to get her, now. He' d have to erase her.

The inner and outer faces agreed.

She didn't want him? Okay.

First, he'd show her what fear was. He'd frighten her worse than she had frightened him.

He licked at the blood on his arm.

Then he'd cut her to pieces.

Anna Batory was a dead woman walking.