The Raven Read online

  Keaton appraised her a long moment. “What about your lapdogs? What’ll Wainwright and Terhune say about it?”

  Iris shrugged. “Ask them.”

  Keaton’s grin reappeared. “Jeez, Iris. It’s too bad I’m a married man. Your feistiness makes my loins boil.”

  From what Dez had heard, Keaton’s marriage didn’t prevent him from partaking of other women, but now probably wasn’t the time to mention this.

  Or maybe he should. Maybe now was precisely the time to rankle Keaton, goad him into a mistake.

  Like what? his rational side wondered. You’re out of options. You’re outnumbered, outgunned, you’re—

  Dez froze.

  He still had his guns.

  He could put a bullet in Keaton’s forehead right now, and without their leader, maybe the others would reveal the truth about Susan.

  Or maybe Keaton’s the only one who knows.

  Dez hesitated. His thoughts raced.

  No, Keaton wouldn’t be the only one who knew. Someone else would. Whether one of the farm boy thugs or another confidante – Lefebvre, Hernandez, Badler, Keaton’s wife – it seemed likely that someone would know about Susan, and that meant that killing Keaton could increase his chances of saving her.

  Dez reached down, drew.

  Keaton’s face went blank as the muzzle of the Ruger rose. Dez was taking aim and squeezing the trigger when something crashed into his side. The Ruger fired, but the slug went wild – Dez knew that even before Keaton leaped atop him, began raining blows on his face. A weight left him – Badler, he now saw. Christ, the guy tackled like a freight train – and then another set of fists joined Keaton’s. The patrons roared in exultation, but the sound was going fuzzy. Dez had a fleeting glimpse of Badler’s laughing face, then Keaton unloaded again and Dez’s vision winked out.

  Chapter Twenty

  Firsts

  Dez is lying in their nest, spooning with Susan. He knows it’s a double standard, but whenever other people engage in romantic behaviors, he gets a little nauseated. Pet names, cuddling, mooning over one another across a candlelit table. When others do it, it gives him the willies.

  But secretly, he really digs doing it, at least when the woman is right.

  He’s always been affectionate, and though he figures his upbringing has something to do with that, he suspects it’s mostly just his nature. Some like to be touched, some don’t. Dez always has.

  His first time, he was ten days shy of seventeen; the girl was a year older and quite a bit more experienced. Dez had no idea what to do and actually unrolled the condom before putting it on. Then, as she watched him with barely restrained laughter, he had to shimmy into the damned thing, the unfurled condom longer than he was, so that it drooped off him like a limp windsock.

  He mounted the girl, and after a couple of pumps, he was done.

  As mortifying as that first encounter was, he remembered the smell of the girl’s hair, some fruity spray that came from a purple can.

  The smell nearly made up for the embarrassment.

  He’d get better at it as time went on, and that allowed him to enjoy the little pleasures more. By the time he was in college and getting laid on a semi-regular basis, he’d begun to yearn for those moments before and after sex, the nuzzling and the gazing and the caressing and the kissing. Never in a million years would he admit these things to anyone, but they were undeniably true. Sure, he loved sex, pined for it, but aside from the act, he reveled in the subtleties. The accouterments of intimacy. The poetry of that secret sharing.

  And though he had plenty of girlfriends in his twenties – including Carly, whom he eventually married – few had moved him the way Susan had. Susan with her sweet closed-lipped smile, Susan with her sleepy-lidded gaze.

  Dez knows, at a level deeper than dream, that this is only a memory, this lying with Susan in their nest. But at that deeper level, where he knows something nasty is awaiting him, he refuses to let the vision fade until he must.

  Their nest, as Susan calls it, is a hollowed-out bunker likely excavated in the old world by enterprising adolescents. Dez never would have found it if not for the trap door that had been left open, its hinges rusty from exposure. Nestled in the forest, shielded from the elements by a screen of pines, the subterranean space was approximately twelve-by-twelve, and not deep enough for them to stand erect. Dez found that if he covered the hinged door with a thick patina of mud and humus, one could actually walk right over the door without hearing the hollow thump.

  The day Dez was dreaming about, he had propped open the door just a smidge so the midafternoon sunlight could spill over their bedding. Over a period of months they’d scrounged enough pillows and blankets and sleeping bags that their nest was as cozy as any proper bed would be, and what made it even better was the knowledge they’d remain safe, even with the door slightly ajar.

  You wanted to be captured or killed, you found a house. Dez had seen that scenario play out too many times, folks thinking, Hey, free house, and setting up shop there. It must have felt too good to be true, and it was. The problem with monsters was that they were also people, or at least retained enough of their humanity to understand how people reasoned.

  People gravitated toward houses.

  Many even tried to return to their own homes after fleeing for their lives.

  Every time it ended in bloodshed.

  So Dez and Susan had survived by living in caves, in derelict stores – not grocery stores or drug stores; the monsters monitored those places – and barns.

  But none of those sites had provided the safety or comfort of the nest.

  Susan rolls over and gazes into his eyes.

  His love for her makes him ache.

  Her brown eyes seldom blink. In another woman that would have been creepy, but with Susan it makes him feel valued. I’m putting my trust in you, those eyes say, because I believe in you. You can touch me and kiss me however you like because I know you respect me.

  Susan was with another man – Jason Oates – when Dez first arrived at the colony, and though Dez knows the pair had been intimate, he also suspects they’d never shared a bond approximating the one Dez and Susan share.

  Susan gazes into his eyes, and though the sight of that profound gaze makes him doubt his worthiness, today it makes him feel strong. He reaches out, traces her cheekbone with his fingertips. He brushes her bottom lip with his forefinger, feels the moisture there. She watches him, her expression eloquent.

  Dez can’t help it; he leans forward and kisses her cheek, her temple. He threads his fingers through her brown hair, sweeps it away from her ear. Her hair is oily – bathing is a luxury in the new world – but it retains the scent of her body, and he leans closer, buries his face in it. Inhales. He takes in the aroma of her, luxuriates in it. Kisses her hair, and though he can’t see her, he senses her smiling, maybe because she’s ticklish.

  The March chill is in the air, but down here it’s warmer, so he draws the shabby quilt off her shoulder, kisses the bare skin there. He knows his beard has gotten wiry and coarse, so he’s careful not to scrape her as he kisses the supple knob of her shoulder, allows a hand to slip over her back. She’s wearing a red cotton tank top, and the fabric is soft under the quilt. He massages her back, enjoying the feel of the cotton against her warm flesh. She must like the sensation too because she burrows into him, makes a contented humming sound, an encouragement that sends his languid arousal into a heightened state.

  But this isn’t about sex, or at least isn’t only about sex. He’s tingling down there, erect and hypersensitive to the press of her thigh, but they have all afternoon, all week, all their lives to savor these moments, and just as he thinks this, the first dissonant chord interrupts their closeness, forms his face into a fleeting scowl.

  He kisses her shoulder, delves lower with his fingertips, kneading her lower back, but the sh
irt is in the way, so he hikes it up, finds honest-to-goodness flesh, and the heat of it enflames him, and though she molds her body into his, welcoming him, another dissonant note sounds, and he realizes what it is this time. His other hand, the one that’s not touching Susan, is fixed in place. There’s something hard and sharp around his wrist. He glances down at the shadowy space between them, but it’s too sludgy to make out. He can feel Susan slipping away from him, can feel their nest darkening, growing colder, and his breathing thins. He longs to make love to Susan, or simply to snuggle with her, but he can’t…move…his goddamned…arm. He jerks on it, and then the smell floods in, and it’s nothing to do with Susan or the nest.

  The smells are fetid, vile, the odors of disease and corruption. The shadows are all around him now, the blue-black darkness like a defective lens filter. He realizes he’s cold, exposed. He thrusts a hand to his crotch and finds he’s at least wearing underwear, but other than that, he’s naked. His elbow is pressing down on some hard surface, and what’s more, his elbow and forearm are wet. He rocks onto his rear end, stares down at his arm, but can’t tell why it’s so moist. Or smelly.

  “Peed yourself,” a voice says.

  Dez shoots a look at the man and beholds a bizarre sight. Though it’s too dim to see well – the basement? Yes. Now he sees the small rectangular windows near the ceiling, which allow him to discern a figure reclining against the wall, the blue-black light rendering half his face visible, the other half swaddled in darkness. The man is naked. His shoulders are the hairiest Dez has ever seen.

  Which could be why the chains around him are so thick and numerous.

  Dez pushes the suspicion away.

  “Isn’t that overkill?” Dez says and winces at the clanging in his skull. He remembers it all in a flash, the confrontation with Keaton, the blow to the back of the head, dealt by God knew whom. Badler? Hernandez? Lefebvre?

  Iris?

  No, he thinks. Iris would never do that. You either trusted someone or you didn’t, and if you trusted no one, you were down to primitive survival.

  “Got some blood in your hair but not too much,” the man in chains says.

  Dez fingers the back of his head gingerly, finds it’s as the man says. Some blood where he was struck, the hair messy and crusted.

  “What’s overkill?” the man asks.

  Dez looks at him then, for the first time registering the man’s throaty, too-deep voice.

  “What’s an overkill?” the man persists, a testy note in his voice. Did he think Dez was mocking him?

  “The chains,” Dez answers. “They’ve got you shackled like Samson.”

  The man scowls. “Who’s Samson?”

  “Why did they wrap you in all those chains when I’ve only got—” Dez glances down at his limbs. “—one on an arm and one on an ankle?”

  The man continues to stare at him, the bafflement plain in his protuberant forehead. “That’s what an overkill is?”

  Dez takes in the man’s shaggy black hair, the matted beard, and wonders how long he’s been down here.

  “Why are there so many chains on you?” Dez asks.

  The man only stares at him.

  “Answer me,” Dez demands. “Why’d they only use two chains on me?”

  For the first time, the man’s face registers something other than puzzlement. He grins bitterly.

  “Because you’re not a werewolf,” the man answers.

  Part Four

  The Hound

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The Flayer

  Dez took in the man’s hairy shoulders, the furry mane running in a V down his torso. “You’re the Hound?”

  “They call me that.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cuz of how they keep me, I guess.”

  Dez surveyed the hairy frame, the thick manacles and leg cuffs, the chains crisscrossing his limbs. He counted fourteen thick chains before the throb in his skull made him shut his eyes.

  “They’re gonna kill you,” the man said.

  “You a clairvoyant too?”

  “Don’t know about that stuff. But I can hear real good.”

  That brought Dez’s attention back. The man was grinning.

  “Heard Keaton and Weeks talking. They don’t think I can hear, but I can. Even through the floor.”

  “Weeks?” The name rang a bell, but Dez couldn’t place it.

  “The preacher,” the man said. “That’s what he calls himself.”

  “What should I call you?”

  The man riveted Dez with his glittery eyes. “You don’t like Hound?”

  “Do you?”

  “The fuck do you think?”

  “Well?”

  “Tom Chaney.”

  “That your real name?”

  “No. Is Dez yours?”

  Dez looked away.

  “Why’d you come here?” Chaney asked.

  Dez shook his head.

  “A girl?” Chaney asked. He smiled, but there was something sinister in it. “For you to be so stupid, it’s gotta be a girl.”

  Dez decided he’d underestimated the man’s intellect. He supposed most people did. Or maybe Dez was a lesser person than he thought he was.

  Chaney’s expression changed, a hunger there. “You see Iris?”

  “Of course I saw her. She runs the bar.”

  The black eyes glittered. “What’d she look like?”

  “Why you want to know that?” Dez asked, though he already knew.

  “She’s pretty,” Chaney said. “She’s the prettiest girl I ever saw.”

  Dez tilted his head. “How old are you, Tom?”

  Something cagey seeped into Chaney’s face. “Old enough.”

  “You enjoy being a werewolf?”

  “Don’t joke about that.”

  So he’d killed someone he loved. That was the way with so many monsters. As if becoming one meant performing an evil act, some sinister rite of passage.

  “Why’d you say that?” Chaney demanded. But he didn’t look angry, looked instead like he was about to cry.

  Was crying, Dez realized. Unexpectedly, Dez felt a rush of pity for the man. Tears streamed down Chaney’s face, his chest shuddering.

  “Hey,” Dez said, “I didn’t mean to…I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

  “Damn right you shouldn’t have!” Chaney bawled. A bubble of snot formed in one nostril, popped.

  “Holy Christ!” a voice boomed down the stairs. A broad shadow appeared on the stairwell, followed by a pair of smaller shadows. The first was Keaton. Dez could tell from the voice. But the other two….

  Iris? Dez thought hopefully.

  “You make me sick sometimes, Hound. All that blubbering,” Keaton said. “Haven’t you been told how pathetic it is when a man cries? Especially an ugly bastard like yourself?”

  Keaton flipped on the lights, which proved to be overhead hanging fluorescents. And though there were only a few of them in the lengthy unfinished space, their glow was brilliant enough to drive dual icepicks into Dez’s brain. He shielded his closed eyes with a forearm, but the afterimage still taunted him. The two attending Keaton were Lefebvre and a woman he hadn’t seen before. Lefebvre appeared to be studying the wall, but the woman, who was short and freckled and unkempt, was glowering at Dez.

  “Can’t help it,” Chaney moaned. “He was talking about….”

  “What you did to your little sister?” Keaton supplied.

  Chaney’s eyes widened, then he let loose with a wail of soul-shattering anguish.

  “Ate her right up,” the freckled woman said. Her auburn hair was thick and tufted, and the more Dez looked at her, the younger he judged the woman to be. Little more than a teenager, though there was no innocence there. The freckled woman exuded nothing at all, save meanness.
r />   “I didn’t wanna hurt her!” Chaney wailed.

  “Hurt her?” Keaton asked. He bent at the waist and spoke into Chaney’s tear-streaked face. “You ripped her apart, Hound. Wasn’t a thing left of her but red mush.”

  “How do you know that?” Chaney asked in his croupy voice. He stared at Keaton with superstitious terror.

  “You know how I know,” Keaton said. He jerked a thumb at the freckled woman. “Bernadette here watched you do it.”

  Chaney’s eyes went wide. “We was alone. Wasn’t nobody home with us.”

  Keaton flapped a hand dismissively. “Never mind, Hound. I’ve given up trying to explain it to you.”

  Dez looked questioningly at Lefebvre, who said, “Bernadette has retrocognition. She can tell you anything anyone’s ever done, just by staring at him long enough.”

  Dez glanced at Bernadette, who was still grinning pitilessly down at Chaney. He had heard of such powers before, but he’d never met someone who possessed them. As devolutionary abilities went, retrocognition seemed far down the pecking order. However…

  …Dez could imagine how such a skill might come in handy for a man like Keaton. With retrocognition, Keaton could learn about the people he encountered, what sort of things they’d done.

  Or, in the case of Tom Chaney, what sins they’d committed.

  Bernadette’s gaze fell on Dez.

  The sensation was not unlike the one he’d experienced with Lefebvre, only it wasn’t identical either. Yes, there was a sense of exposure, a feeling of violation, but along with that he felt something deeper and even more troubling. It felt as though powerful hands were reaching through the top of his head, slithering through his neck, into his torso, and then spreading his entire core to rummage through his entrails. Images began to flicker in Dez’s brain, some of them pleasing, most of them not.

  He saw himself stealing a G.I. Joe figure – the black one named Snake Eyes – from a peer at his childhood daycare center. He watched himself catching a toad with friends, lighting fireworks near the toad, then under the toad. Watching the toad blasting into the air, pirouetting, and somehow landing on its feet. But not dying. Watched his younger self stuff a cylindrical firework into the toad’s mouth so that the wick poked out like a droopy gray cigarette. Watched his younger self light the wick. Watched him and his friends gasp and laugh as the firework blew the toad’s head off.