The Raven Read online

  However, Dez mused as he studied the woman now, there were still women, but if they were free and respected, it meant they possessed some special power. The majority of vampires were women. Some of the most ferocious cannibals Dez had encountered had been women.

  So what could this woman do? Plenty, Dez guessed, judging from the aura of solemnity the men around her exuded.

  Dez studied her upturned face, was surprised by the unblemished youthfulness there. The woman was likely thirty, but she looked like she’d never suffered hardship of any kind, had spent the past two years of hell cloistered away in study and prayer. The woman’s eyes were intelligent, a coffee-hued brown. There was a vitality there that Dez found unsettling.

  Evidently, the red-haired man found staring at the cloaked woman difficult too. The red-haired man smiled in the way of all lackeys. “Come on, Erica. This fella’s armed to the gills. You think Keaton’s gonna like him strutting around here like some prince?”

  “Lefebvre let him through,” Erica answered.

  A look of disdain rippled through the red-haired man’s features. “Lefebvre is just the doorman. He’s—”

  Unaccountably, the red-haired man stopped speaking and took a backward step, his pale eyes flitting downward. Dez followed his wide-eyed gaze but saw only the chair he’d been occupying before confronting Dez. Now, however, the red-haired man was gaping at it like it was a viper poised to strike.

  What’s this? Dez wondered.

  “Hey,” Gattis said, his tone conciliatory. “Let’s just drink, all right?”

  The red-haired man looked like he might bolt in the other direction. But his shoulders twitched in what might have been a shrug. “Sure. Hell, I was only being helpful.”

  With that, he moved out of Dez’s way. He retreated a couple paces from the table rather than returning to his chair, a decision Dez judged strange. Whoever or whatever the woman in the cloak was, the others at the table were scared silly by her.

  As were, he now realized, the rest of the patrons in the vicinity of the table. A score of men had taken notice of the scene, and their expressions ranged from sleepy curiosity to a rabid, glitter-eyed hunger.

  Dez passed the red-haired man. He sensed the eyes of the patrons marking his passage. Dez kept his gaze fixed on the bar at the far end of the room as he moved.

  Something hard thumped him painfully on the back. Cold liquid splashed his neck and soaked his collar.

  Dez kept the pain out of his face by gritting his teeth. Someone had nailed him with a beer stein.

  He spun around and scanned the faces for the perpetrator, but the dozens of eyes only watched him sleepily. For a wild moment, Dez found himself on the verge of shouting, Who did it? I want the culprit to reveal himself now!

  But that would be worse than foolish. It would be suicide. If he showed how rattled he was, they’d rend him to pieces. Who knew what manner of creatures lurked behind those impassive faces?

  Dez was turning back toward the bar when a voice called, “Did you enjoy your drink?”

  Dez paused. The voice had been bland, uninflected.

  Don’t show anything, he reminded himself. You show your anger, whoever pelted you with that stein wins.

  At the thought of the object that had knocked him in the ribs, Dez looked down and discovered it lying on its side. There was a moose featured in bas relief, its antlers raised to a full moon, as if it had turned feral like so many of its human counterparts. Dez’s eyes crawled up to the nearest table, where he discovered a man with a thick, brushy mustache staring at him. The guy’s features were arranged in gloating defiance.

  Dez was sure the man was the guilty party, but how could he prove it? Ask him, he supposed, but then what? If the man said yes, he’d done it, Dez would be cornered. Either fight the man or turn the other cheek and be branded a coward.

  Fleetingly, Dez was reminded of what he’d heard about prisons: You either proved your toughness by killing another man, or you became a victim. Several times, Dez had found this stark axiom to be true in the new world.

  But what if the mustachioed man had hidden powers? Would a Latent frequent a place like this? Dez doubted it. If there still existed Latents like himself, they were almost certainly in hiding the way he and Susan had been before Keaton had shown up.

  Dez’s lips thinned.

  Keaton. The memory of the man’s soulless face reminded him why he was here. He needed to locate Keaton; he was the key to finding Susan. If Dez were killed now, he’d never learn what happened to her. He couldn’t save her. If she were still alive.

  She is, he thought. She is alive.

  He forced himself to move toward the bar.

  “I did it,” someone called, and this time Dez knew who was speaking.

  Knew it even before he turned and saw the woman in the cloak rising from her chair and facing him across an expanse of thirty feet.

  Erica folded her hands before her, smiled charmingly. “It’s a pleasure to know there are still Latents in the world.”

  Now everyone in the bar was watching.

  There was no use protesting. Nor of speaking at all. If Dez claimed to have powers, Erica would demand he display them. If he confessed to having none, the others would slaughter him for sport. He could see the violence in their eyes, sensed it baking out of their stinking clothes.

  Erica lowered her head and pressed the tip of a forefinger to her bottom lip. “You’re probably wondering how my aim is so accurate. After all, you were a good distance from me.” She looked up at Dez with mock inquisitiveness.

  “I know how you did it,” Dez said.

  Good, he thought. His voice had been tight, low, but it had been steady. Not a scared voice. Not a plea.

  “Care to educate the denizens of the Four Winds?” Erica said, smile broadening. She flourished a hand to encompass the vast room. “Perhaps you, like Lefebvre, are gifted with the ability to penetrate the psyche?”

  “It’s nice of you to take an interest in my gifts,” Dez said.

  Erica’s smile wavered a little. Rustles of movement stirred here and there, all eyes shifting to Erica.

  Erica’s eyes narrowed, then her self-possession returned. “Perhaps you’d like to see the trick repeated.” The finger touched her lips again as she observed her surroundings. She tapped her lips. “Ah, yes. That will do.”

  A heavy square table halfway between Erica and Dez began to vibrate, then to rattle. The men seated there shoved away, their faces blank with surprise. Several snatched up their drinks, but a couple opted to forsake them.

  The table came to rest. A febrile energy charged the air.

  Then, as Dez watched in horrorstruck silence, the large wooden table, which must have weighed two hundred pounds, began to rise from the floor.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Wurlitzer and the Brawl

  Despite the fact that they had no doubt seen tricks like this before, a kind of awed sigh breathed through the room. Dez was keyed up, frightened, yet there was a childlike part of him that found this feat amazing.

  The heavy table floated six feet off the ground.

  Dez dared not take his eyes off the huge object, but he sensed Erica beyond it, hands raised, fingers splayed like some storybook conjuror. Was that necessary? he wondered. Would the table levitate without the sorcerer’s pose, or was this merely for effect?

  The table scarcely tremored as it floated toward the center of the room, where it hung suspended fifteen feet off the ground. Every eye in the bar remained riveted on it, the men in the main seating area peering up at it like it was some wooden god. The patrons from the upper galleries watched with expressions as fixed as the severed heads on the wall.

  In the silence, Dez fancied he could hear the beat of his heart. He glanced at Erica, who watched him with satisfaction.

  “Yes,” Erica said. “It i
s rather quiet in here, isn’t it?”

  What did you used to be? Dez had time to wonder. You talk like a pretentious literature professor. Or were you manager of a video game store who treated your customers with disdain?

  “Wainwright,” Erica called. “Please grace us with a song.”

  An older man in overalls and a green John Deere cap scuttered over to a Wurlitzer jukebox Dez hadn’t noticed. As the table levitated, its legs only wobbling slightly, Wainwright fumbled coins out of his pocket. Several of them clattered on the hardwood floor. He finally managed to feed a quarter into the Wurlitzer, which glowed an infernal red. His palsied finger hovered over the buttons as he scanned the selections. Then, evidently finding what he was after, he punched buttons, stood back from the jukebox, and waited.

  The honkytonk strains of Hank Williams Jr. filled the barroom. Dez knew the number well. Hank Jr. sang, “All my rowdy friends have settled down….”

  The table hung in the air between him and Erica.

  Erica grinned and exhaled. “Ahh…that’s nicer. I sometimes find it difficult to think in the silence. When I write, I must have music playing.”

  Dez sensed the men to his left scooting away. The patrons to his right didn’t move.

  Erica studied his face, seemingly untaxed by the effort of levitating the table. “Decorum suggests you ask me what I write. After all, you’re the invader here, not us.”

  Dez watched the floating table. “I just came for a drink.”

  The response elicited a smattering of laughter from the crowd. Erica’s expression tightened. She strafed the room with her eyes, and while some patrons quieted on the instant, others showed no apprehension. That made sense, Dez reflected. Some would regard a telekinetic with fear; others would be unimpressed by such displays. Maybe they possessed greater powers. Maybe they had simply witnessed too many horrors to be frightened any longer.

  Dez almost didn’t move swiftly enough.

  The only warning he had was a curl of Erica’s lip. The next moment the table was hurtling toward him. Erica’s control of the ponderous object was so thorough that the table flipped as it accelerated, making escape more difficult. Dez surged dove sideways, flattening his limbs and head as well as he could. The edge of the table still dealt him a glancing blow in the middle of the back, knocking out his wind and planting him on the grimy carpeted floor.

  He shot a look over his shoulder to watch the table’s progress. As the soaring table rocketed along, several of the men at another table displayed the sense to leap out of the way. One man, however, did not. In the split second before the tables collided, Dez saw the man’s brushy mustache, his slack expression. Poor bastard, he’d been observing the confrontation as though taking in a particularly engrossing movie, but as the flying table crashed into the one at which Brushy Mustache was sitting, his expression morphed from starey-eyed surprise to extreme pain. The flying table struck Brushy Mustache in the torso. Then the whole lot – tables, beer steins, and the too-slow man – went toppling over in an unruly heap. Patrons scattered, chairs were overturned, but very few voices sounded. What was there to say? Another man was knocked down by the tumbling tables, but he made out better than Brushy Mustache, who lay groaning several feet from where he’d started. Though the flying table – now at rest on its side – obscured Dez’s view, he could see well enough the way the man’s boots twitched. He knew Brushy Mustache wouldn’t be getting up again.

  Dez pushed onto his elbows and regarded Erica.

  Who beamed at him. “My friends would like you to relinquish your belongings,” she said. She gestured toward the red-haired man who’d confronted Dez earlier. “If you give Crosby your weapons, I might consider mitigating your sentence.”

  Sure you will, Dez thought. He imagined cowering before Erica and begging her for mercy.

  Never.

  Nor could he run. A fleeting vision of himself scurrying from one hiding place to the next strobed through his mind, Erica making sport of him, roaring laughter and toying with him as objects careened at Dez from every corner of the bar.

  Only one option, and not much of one at that.

  The red-haired man, Crosby, reclined in his chair and propped his shitkickers on the table. “I’ve always wanted a crossbow like that. Yours is slicker than the one the nappy dude had in that old TV show.”

  Erica tilted her head at Dez. “You see? My friend has a need, and you can satisfy it. Now unless you want to—”

  Dez was already on his feet and sprinting at Erica. Surprise registered on the telekinetic’s face – clearly she didn’t possess Lefebvre’s ability to read minds – and then, with Dez fifteen feet away and closing fast, Erica backpedaled and swept a hand at Dez.

  An object blurred toward him. He assumed it was another beer stein, but what did it matter? The object nailed him in the elbow. Torrid heat blasted up his arm, the impact point like a core of ice. He was almost upon Erica when the woman finally moved, bolting to Dez’s left and leaping upon a table. Dez had groped clumsily for her as she passed, but he’d missed Erica by a good two feet. Dez was skidding to a halt and preparing to go after Erica when something hard slammed him in the lower back. He grunted, half-spun, and saw that Gattis had driven a chairback into him, the grinning man paying no mind to the concept of a fair fight. Crosby, too, was coming around the table after him.

  Three against one, at the least. Maybe the others at Erica’s table would fly at Dez too. Maybe the whole bar would converge on him.

  But Dez didn’t think so. Erica’s posse didn’t play fair, but they seemed an isolated unit. Solidarity didn’t exist in the Four Winds. The menagerie of severed heads attested to that, as did the emotionless response to Brushy Mustache’s likely fatal collision with the table. These men cared no more about Erica and her clan than they cared about Dez, so long as they stayed alive. And, perhaps, were provided with diverting entertainment.

  A sharp intake of breath behind Dez made him whirl. The sound had emanated from the men sitting at the table upon which Erica stood. Their surprise stemmed from a pair of heavy beer glasses shooting from their table straight at Dez. He sidestepped in time for one heavy glass to rocket by his head, but the second crashed into his already-smarting elbow, which he’d flung up to ward off the blow. The glass didn’t shatter in a million pieces, which might have saved Dez’s eyesight, but because it was so thick, it hardly gave upon impact and fractured instead into jagged shards that twirled like piñata candy. Damn, it hurt.

  Gritting his teeth, Dez surged toward Erica.

  And was promptly tripped. He landed hard, heard cackling laughter, and saw the man with two-dozen piercings pointing down at him. Dez had forgotten all about the pierced man, but now he made a mental note to deal with him after Erica.

  Dez realized he’d taken his eyes off Erica. He flopped onto his back as another glass exploded where, a moment before, his head had been.

  In the next instant a knife darted at him. Dez was crowded against a man’s legs, so he rolled in the only direction he could, into the shattered glass that had nearly brained him. It crunched under his shoulders, but his leather coat kept it from puncturing his flesh. The knife skittered harmlessly away.

  A flash of movement from the table of assholes drew his attention. He craned his head toward them in time to be doused with lukewarm beer. Dez coughed, blinked, and discovered Gattis was the one who’d flung the liquid into his face. The red-haired Crosby was coming around the table toward him, and Dez knew this was it. Erica would be unleashing another assault, Gattis and Crosby looked demented enough to commit murder, and the guffawing moron with the piercings was too unhinged to predict.

  Four against one.

  Dez pushed to his feet, was pelted in the back with another blunt object. Dez reached for his Ruger, but Crosby, his pale blue eyes agleam, was upon him. The man carried a drooping, leathery object Dez recognized as an old-fashioned
policeman’s blackjack, the kind of thing meant to knock a man out. But the glitter in Crosby’s eyes told him it wasn’t subduing Dez he had in mind. No, if Crosby nailed him with the business end of that blackjack, Dez’s head would soon be added to the wall of sightless trophies, some messy epitaph – LATENT or TRUCK STEALER – carved into his forehead.

  Dez brought up a boot and slammed it into Crosby’s chest. Crosby, who’d evidently expected Dez to offer no resistance, didn’t even swing the blackjack, but just went flying backward and disappeared between a pair of seated patrons.

  Dez ducked, not because he had eyes in the back of his head, but because Erica’s onslaughts occurred with metronomic regularity. He suspected Erica had never been forced into varying her methods, her victims so awed by her telekinesis that deception hadn’t been necessary.

  The chair Erica had sent at Dez went skidding over the table and plowed into a sullen-faced man with a salt-and-pepper crew cut. The man’s expression never changed. He merely let out a soft grunt and toppled over backward.

  Gattis stalked around the table, his long, tangled beard dripping. What had drenched Gattis, Dez had no idea. What was clear, though, was the weapon Gattis carried.

  A medieval mace was the first thing Dez thought of, though that wasn’t quite right. Clearly an object of Gattis’s own fashioning, the implement was two feet long, the arm red, the handle black. At its terminus was what Dez first mistook for a Styrofoam ball, one of those crafty things you’d find near the pipe cleaners and fabric. Then he saw the stitching and realized it was a softball with shards of colored glass embedded in it.

  Dez had been so transfixed by the bizarre instrument that he forgot about Erica. Something crashed into his temple, knocking him sideways. Molten liquid poured down the side of his face.

  Aw hell, he thought. This isn’t good.

  He slithered to the floor, and he didn’t even see the next object before it thudded into his shoulder. He was on all fours, blood dripping down his cheek. He watched the crimson droplets patter the carpet between his fingers. A shadow spread over him, and he knew it was Gattis, the son of a bitch no doubt preparing to finish him with his lethal mace. In desperation, Dez clambered forward and took refuge beneath the table. Behind him the mace whistled down and bashed the floor. Dez saw, beyond Gattis’s legs, Erica’s hand flick in his direction, a glittering object arrowing at Dez. The butter knife chunked into the side of Dez’s calf. The dull blade penetrated no more than a half-inch, but the pain was more than enough to rouse him from his stupor.