Yarrow

  "You can think what you want, Rick. I've never tried to hurt you. The only person that's standing in your way is yourself."

  With that he nodded brusquely to Debbie, who gave him a wry grin, and left the restaurant.

  "The cheap fucker," Rick muttered. "He even stiffed me for the tab."

  "Hey," Debbie said, laying a hand on his arm. "Take it easy."

  "Take it…" For a moment there was a coldness in his eyes that made Debbie wish she'd left with Bill, then Rick shrugged and smiled. "What the fuck," he said. "Easy come, easy go. It's the story of my life."

  "Why don't we go down to the Market?" Debbie said. "There's some nice bars down there. We could talk, have a few drinks, and then… see where the evening takes us."

  Rick regarded her wolfishly. "Hey, hey," he said. "All of a sudden the night's bright and things're looking good."

  He knew Stella was waiting for him at his place, but there was no way he wanted to see her right now— not go home and have to listen to her go on about something or other on top of the shit Worthington had just laid on him. And besides, he thought as he studied Debbie's cleavage, he had a point or two he wanted to work out with his present company. Stella could wait. Hell, she liked waiting, and it'd give her something else to moan about when he saw her.

  Something moved at the end of the alley, and Farley looked up. The night had gotten cooler and he was in the middle of taking a jacket out of his suitcase when he sensed the motion. He saw a shadow blocking the mouth of the alleyway. A tall figure. Squinting, he tried to make out who it was.

  "Hey, Ron," he said in a voice barely above a whisper. "That you?"

  The figure moved toward him, blue eyes glittering like a cat's in the dim light. Evil flowed from those eyes like blood from a fresh wound.

  "Oh, Jesus fuck," Farley moaned. "Don't hurt me, mister."

  The suitcase fell from his lap and clunked on the ground. He put a hand out to the wall, seeking purchase, but he was shaking too much to stand. The eyes closed in on his own, demanding, overpowering him.

  Please… leave me alone… don't hurt… snake-headed

  Farley tried to say the words, but they froze in his throat. He couldn't move. He couldn't even shake anymore.

  The stranger bent down low, face inches from Farley's unshaven features. Suddenly Farley remembered the man and the man in the park. His bladder gave way and urine soaked his pants. He saw a glint of bright metal in the man's hand. The blue eyes swallowed him. He felt the snakes from his nightmare crawling down his throat, in through his ears and nose, right up his asshole.

  Darkness came up and swallowed him.

  Lysistratus leaned forward. He laid a hand against Farley's cheek, felt the coarse stubble under his palm. The reek of sweat, alcohol, and urine filled the air, but he ignored it. He touched his forehead to that of his victim's, willed him to dream, then drew the dreams out of him, wine-sodden but still nourishing. And then, just as they weakened, just before their last essence spilled into him, he plunged his knife into the wino's throat and gave a small cry of pleasure as the life spark leapt from the dying mind into his own.

  He moved back before the blood could fountain over him. Stepping over the growing puddle, he paused long enough to wipe his knife blade clean on the dead man's shirt, then slipped on through the alleyway, took its right turn, and found himself in a parking lot. The knife vanished into his gym bag.

  The dreams he'd stolen tonight set the blood to pounding through his veins. He lifted his head to the sky and almost wailed like the wolf the Inuit shaman named him. He bared his teeth in a grin instead and started for home.

  And then there was one, he thought.

  "This is weird, you know that?" Mick said.

  He and Ben were sitting in Ben's cab. It was parked where Cameron met Riverdale— about five houses down the block from Cat's place. They slouched low in their seats, rearview and side mirrors adjusted so that they could see the street behind them without having to show themselves.

  "He might not even show up again," Ben said. "He almost got caught last night."

  Mick shook his head. "Nah. Those kinds of guys always come back. The more risk there is, the better they like it. What I'm wondering is whether maybe one of us should be watching the back."

  "Peter said Cat saw him standing in the shadow of that house on the corner. If he does show up tonight, I think it'll be to look around, not to break in."

  "Maybe." Mick hooked his hands around his knees and leaned his head back. "I tell you," he added, "if we catch this sucker tonight, he's going to be sorry he ever messed around with this kind of shit. It's gonna be one, two, three." He smacked his hands lightly against his knees. "And that'll be all she wrote. You got the time, Ben?"

  "Quarter past two."

  "If he's coming, he'll be coming soon."

  By the time Houlihan's was closing and Rick and Debbie hit the street, neither one of them was exactly sober. They made their way down York Street to where they'd left Rick's car, managing to get into their respective seats without undue mishap. Rick stared blankly at the keys in his hand.

  "Where do these go?" he asked.

  Debbie giggled. "Don't you know?"

  "Ish a joke— get it?"

  Debbie didn't, but it didn't really seem to matter. Rick fiddled around with the keys until he finally fit the proper one into its slot and turned the motor over. It caught with a roar as he gave it too much gas.

  "My… place or yours?" Debbie asked.

  Her head felt too dizzy to keep upright, so she leaned it against Rick's shoulder. He dropped his hand down to her thigh and she closed her legs, trapping it.

  "We'll go to… mine," Rick announced. "I want you to meet Shtella. You'll like her. She humps like a bunny."

  Debbie regarded him with drunken worry. "But I don't do it with women."

  "Thash okay. Neither does she."

  He pulled away from the curb in a series of stops and starts, steered the car around the block until they wove their way out onto Sussex Drive. They cruised down Colonel By Drive, deaked up through the parking lot at Defense Headquarters and headed south on Nicholas Street. Rick began to whistle through his teeth while Debbie dozed contentedly on his shoulder.

  Cat and Peter sat in the darkened study. Though a bed had been made up on the couch for Peter downstairs, neither of them was ready to try to sleep. Once they'd come inside, Cat's nervousness had stolen into Peter, so that by the time midnight arrived, they were both starting at every sound.

  They didn't speak much. Cat sat in her thinking chair by the window, Peter in the rocker they'd brought in from her bedroom. When Cat started to doze around two o'clock, Peter chose a cassette at random from the twenty or so stacked up beside Cat's Aiwa. The one he picked was a homemade collection labeled "Misc. Classical." Returning to the rocker, he half dozed along with Cat as the solemn organ and strings of Albinoni's "Adagio" whispered through the room.

  Ten-thirty rolled by without Rick showing up, and Stella wondered why she was surprised. She looked around his living room, mad enough to trash something. Like the picture window. His Sony Trinatron would go nicely through it. Or maybe his stereo, one component at a time.

  She didn't know why she had ever expected him to change, didn't know why she should even care. They were so obviously mismatched that only she and a blind man could have missed it. All that kept her from leaving right now was that she wanted to confront him when he came in, to find out just what he had wanted out of this relationship. The money she'd invested in Captain Computer? Well, he could kiss that goodbye. She'd see her lawyer about it first thing in the morning and have that money out of the company so fast it'd make his head spin.

  She got up to pace the living room and caught her reflection in the big picture window. Was it her body? She wasn't exactly Bo Derek, but she wasn't ugly either. Before she started seeing Rick, she'd never had any trouble getting dates. The trouble she did have was trying to find a meaningful relationship in a world tha
t had turned its back on commitments.

  So how did she go about meeting someone nice? Someone that cared. Who was willing to give as much of himself as she had to give him. How the hell did she make sure she didn't end up with someone like Rick again? She was tired of being ragged. When it came to men, she always seemed to pick the wrong ones. If they didn't need mothering, they were like Rick and didn't really give a shit about anyone but themselves. What they wanted were whores— there when they needed a fuck, gone when they didn't want to see them.

  She glanced at her watch. They were running The Playboy and the Bobby-Soxer on Channel 11 in ten minutes— Shirley Temple as a teenager, but sounding just the same as she did in The Good Ship Lollipop— with Cary Grant, handsome as ever. She'd seen it before, but maybe it'd be just the thing to calm her down.

  Where were the guys like Cary Grant in her life? Why did she have to get stuck with the Ricks? If he'd been with another woman tonight, she was going to kill him. She was going to kill him anyway, but if he'd been out playing Hot-cock Kirkby, she was going to really kill him. It wouldn't do anything to help their own relationship— because that was finished as of tonight— but if it made him think twice about the next woman he dragged into his life…

  Stella sighed. Who was she kidding?

  Lysistratus ignored his usual vantage point tonight. There was something in the air that made him nervous, so when he left his home after dropping off his gym bag, he took a more circuitous route to Cat's home. He still kept to the shadows, but tonight he hid in the deeper ones along Bellwood. The house wasn't so easy to watch from here. He could see the lights were out. But the street seemed too awake.

  He sensed that she had someone with her again. The two of them were drifting in that twilight place between waking and sleep. He reached out for Cat with his mind, snatching at her half-formed dreams. As the first taste of their opiate sweetness entered him, he knew he needed physical contact with her. Last night he had withdrawn because of her companion, but tonight… the man would have to take his chances. Tonight Lysistratus was in the mood for killing whatever got in his way.

  Peter awoke with a start, wondering what had woken him and how long he'd been asleep. The tape was still playing, so it couldn't have been that long. He looked from the cassette machine to Cat, and his eyes went wide with shock.

  There was something perched on the arm of her chair, shaking her arm as though trying to wake her. Last night's hobgoblin, all eyes and gangly limbs. It seemed almost insubstantial, as though he could put his hand right through it, but it was there— something was there!— all the same.

  For a long moment he and the curious apparition regarded each other. The creature was poised as if for flight now, like a startled hare just before it bounded off, or a squirrel suddenly aware that a cat was stalking it. Slowly Peter reached a hand toward it. He had to feel if it was real. He had to know if it was really there. Then Cat made a sharp, moaning sound.

  The hobgoblin vanished. One moment it was there, saucer eyes watching him, and the next it was gone, replaced by a small glowing ball of gold light. Then that too, like the Cheshire cat's grin, winked out.

  The room grew cold. Peter swept it with his gaze, but Cat drew his attention. Her Tiddy Mun— if that was what it had been— would have to wait. Cat was twisting in the chair, her features tight with pain. Peter took her by the shoulders and gently shook her.

  "Wake up, Cat. Wake up!"

  That's what the strange being had been trying to do as well. Why was it so important that she woke up? What was happening to her? If she was in trouble in… in her Otherworld…

  The chill in the room grew more pronounced. Cat no longer fought her dream. She lay slack in his grip, head lolling to one side.

  "Cat!"

  At that moment Peter knew the first inklings of terror. The hobgoblin, strange as it had been, hadn't frightened him. But what came now… creeping up his spine… spreading through his nervous system…

  His gaze was drawn to the window and beyond it, to the street, to the shadows of a house and the gaze there that searched for his own. Cat slipped out of his numbed fingers, falling back against the chair as paralysis gripped him. Something was in his head, shredding his feeble attempts to push it out, and he knew if it stayed there he would never return from the blackness that came washing up to swallow him.

  A curious memory came to him: He was sitting in his own living room, reading, when one of Cat's books leapt from the bookshelf to hit the floor. He saw it again, falling in slow motion, and wondered if it had been a premonition of some sort, some warning that he had neither realized nor accepted for what it was.

  Then the darkness was all.

  Lysistratus drank in the heavy nectar of Cat's dreaming psyche. As the first fires coursed through him, he knew that he had to go to her. He had to feel her skin under his hands, feel her heart tremble against his. He had to fill her with the hardening penis that swelled between his trousers and leg.

  The net of his power reached out to draw Peter into its web. Lysistratus saw the face at the window and locked his gazed into the other man's. Peter dropped unprotestingly, dropped like a stone into the dark sleep that Lysistratus woke inside him, and soon his psyche was feeding the parasite as well.

  With their combined essences rippling through him, Lysistratus stepped from his hiding place and crossed the street. He was still only skimming the surfaces of their souls. He needed physical contact now to complete the bridge— flesh to flesh. He would drain the man until he was empty. Then he would fill the woman with his seed, fill her and take her pleasure back into him again, multiplied a hundredfold.

  He imagined the bubbly voice of Clare Grogan, lead singer for Altered Images, and smiled at the song she sang in his mind— "See Those Eyes." His own eyes glittered like blue fire.

  Cary Grant was in the middle of an obstacle race at a country fair when Stella heard Rick's car pull into the driveway. She turned off the TV with the remote and went into the hall, standing under the framed Magritte print that hung to the left of the light switch. She had a half-dozen scathing comments ready on the tip of her tongue, but nothing had prepared her for what came through the door.

  Rick stood framed in the doorway with a stunning blonde on his arm, both of them pissed to the gills. Stella stared at them, her mouth half open, and didn't know what to say.

  "Hey, Shtel," Rick began. "How's it—"

  "Don't you dare talk to me!" she cried, finding her voice.

  She looked from him to his companion. The woman had a slightly sympathetic looked behind her glazed gaze that only served to further infuriate Stella.

  "Don't be mad, Shtel baby," Rick slurred. "We can… make it a shreesome…."

  Stella's cheeks went beet red. She'd never felt more embarrassed in her life. Anything she might have said just then got locked up tightly inside her. Wordlessly she snatched up her purse and stormed out the door, elbowing the pair of them out of her way. Once she had her car started, she squealed its rear tires backing out of the driveway and roared down Briarhill to Heron Road.

  "Heads up," Mick murmured.

  Ben checked the side-view mirror. "Jesus," he said. "It's the Dude."

  "The who?"

  "That's just what I call him— I thought he was going to put a make on me in the park back of my house yesterday afternoon. He gave me the creeps. I wonder what he's doing here."

  "Well, he's sure a sharp dresser," Mick said. "Think he's a friend of Cat's?"

  Ben sat up and swivelled in his seat to get a better view. "I don't know. He's not skulking. But he's going right for her door."

  "Well," Mick said, "if he's got an honest reason for being there at this time of night, we can always apologize politely and beat a hasty retreat. And if not…"

  Ben nodded. Something hard settled in the pit of his stomach, and his heart was thumping to beat the band. His hands were sweaty as he eased open the door. Now that the moment had come, he wasn't sure he could go through with it. B
ut then he thought of Cat, of the guy that was harassing her, and his resolve hardened.

  Mick was already on the street. "Let's go," he whispered.

  They jogged down the pavement, silent in their running shoes, slowing down as they neared Cat's hedge. Mick leaned close.

  "Just let me do the talking," he breathed into Ben's ear. "You're big. All you've got to do is stand behind me and look intimidating— you know what I mean? You won't even have to lift a hand."

  Ben nodded, swallowing with difficulty. Maybe they should have just called the cops. Sure, he wanted to help Cat, but it wasn't like he was Charles Bronson or anything.

  Mick took a couple of quick steps so that he'd be the first through the gap in the hedge. Ben saw him turn in, then the figure of the Dude stepped out, one arm raised high. He had something in his hand that looked like a short club or stick. It came down with a crack as it glanced off Mick's skull.

  Ben froze. Those strange eyes he remembered from the afternoon in the park— almost luminous in the dark— were tracking him. They snared his gaze, then stopped him dead as he was about to rush forward. He remembered his nightmare— the fish-scaled man with the barracuda teeth. He'd had those same eyes. Those same fucking eyes…

  The little club lifted and fell a second time, and Mick tumbled to the ground.

  Ben wanted to rush the Dude. He wanted to smash him. But he couldn't move. Couldn't even twitch. He'd never experienced such pure, simple helplessness before.

  "I thought I felt spying eyes," Lysistratus said softly.

  The man's voice sent a weird shiver down Ben's spine. Jesus Christ! What was going on? Why couldn't he move? What had this sucker done to him?

  The Dude's eyes drilled straight through to Ben's soul, and he could feel his legs buckling under him, the pavement rushing up to meet his face. This… couldn't… be… real.

  He hit the ground hard. All he knew was the impact— the physical pain of hitting the pavement, and worse, the pain inside his head. Somehow the Dude had gotten inside his head. He was twisting Ben's thoughts into knots, using the pain to raise a sea of blackness in which Ben knew he would inevitably drown. He could sense more than see the Dude's approach. Just as it had happened in his nightmare, he was helpless to protect himself. Was the Dude lifting his club to use on him as well? Or was he opening his mouth to show the rows of wicked teeth…?