Nocturnal

  Pookie nodded, memories of the rooftop gun-battle flashing through his mind — those were the same pistols the archer had fired at him. Pookie again realized how lucky he had been; the FNs’ powerful 5.7-by-28-millimeter cartridge could punch through typical Kevlar body armor, then tumble through the body behind that armor. The bullet’s tumbling action would open up a wound channel far larger than the bullet’s diameter.

  Bryan reached out and pointed at two empty spots in the handgun rack. “Space for four FNs, only two here. Assume he’s got at least one on him.”

  “Awesome,” Pookie said. “Let’s hope he doesn’t get home anytime soon.”

  Bryan’s gloved hands lifted the larger weapon out of the rack. It sort of looked like an M-16 juiced up on steroids — a thick, composite stock, a flat-black body topped by a rail-handle, a long magazine curved slightly forward, and a midlength barrel.

  “USAS-12,” Bryan said. “Semiauto shotgun. Ten shots in five seconds. File under avoid.”

  “Consider it filed.”

  Pookie examined the shelves and drawers. He saw dozens of boxes of ammo for both the five-sevens and for the shotgun — someone was ready to party.

  Bryan opened a metal cabinet on the other side of the room. Inside it hung two dark green cloaks. “Maybe Erickson is too old to be the vigilante, but this is definitely the vigilante’s home base.” He shut the cabinet. “But what’s with all the fake creatures?”

  Pookie shrugged. “Maybe it’s a hobby. A way to kill time when he’s not killing people.”

  Bryan sniffed again. He turned to the old bank-vault door, then walked slowly toward it.

  Pookie sniffed as well. “More ammonia?”

  Bryan shook his head. “It’s not just chemicals. I smell something else.”

  His gloved hands reached out and started turning the heavy wheel.

  Jebediah Erickson

  As soon as John saw the old man walking down the sidewalk of Franklin Street, he knew who it had to be.

  “Come on, Pooks,” John hissed to himself. “Hurry up.”

  The old man wore black slacks and a dark-brown button-up shirt. Black shoes trod noiselessly on the sidewalk. His hair was so thin it seemed to float above his scalp. He was coming closer, only a few feet from the house.

  Just pass on by, just pass on by …

  The old man reached the bottom steps and started up. He had reached the landing and turned right to climb the rest of the steps when John raised his left hand, palm out.

  “SFPD,” John said. “Stay right where you are. Please identify yourself.”

  The old man looked up, stared John in the eyes. “I am Jebediah Erickson. This is my house. What is happening?”

  Could this man have a gun? What about those people standing across the street? Were they armed? John’s body twitched. He had to control himself. “Uh … there’s been a break-in. Your alarm. Neighbors called. Please step out to the sidewalk.”

  “I’m fine right here,” the old man said. “Who are you?”

  Shit. Should John lie? No, too late for that. “Officer John Smith, San Francisco Police Department.”

  “Please produce identification.”

  Shit. Shit-shit-shit. Goddamit, Pookie, get out here.

  John lifted the badge hanging around his chest. “You see this, sir? This is a badge.”

  Erickson held out a hand. “Throw me the badge, Officer. I don’t know if you are the police or just acting like the police, so keep your distance.”

  The old man’s house had been broken into and it didn’t phase him, not one bit. He radiated confidence. He had every right to ask for ID.

  John lifted the badge from around his neck, gently tossed it to Erickson. The old man caught it. He looked at it carefully, then started up the marble stairs.

  John raised the Sig Sauer he held in his right hand, just enough to show he was serious. “Stay where you are!”

  Erickson stopped walking. He looked at the pistol, then back up at John. The old man smiled and tossed the badge back.

  John again strung it around his neck. He had to stall, buy time for Pookie and Bryan to finish whatever they were doing. “Now, sir, if I could impose upon you to return the favor? Identification, please.”

  “I don’t have any identification,” Erickson said. “Are there more police in my house?”

  Shit-shit-shit. “Yes.”

  “Get them out of there, immediately. The chief of police is a friend of mine and if they don’t leave, right now, it will go poorly for them.”

  John nodded, then pulled the phone out of his pocket. It was hard to dial with his left thumb, but no way he was taking the gun out of his right. Something about this old white dude was scary as fuck.

  Bryan turned the wheel until he heard bolts receding into the thick vault door. The wheel stopped. He pulled the heavy door, which slowly swung open on well-oiled hinges.

  He and Pookie stepped inside.

  The iron-walled vault was all of twelve feet long by eight feet wide. A rack of knives, saws and other disturbing instruments hung on one wall. Shelves containing plastic bottles of chemicals lined the other walls, leaving just enough room to walk around the stainless-steel table in the room’s center.

  A stainless-steel table with troughs around the edges, just like the ones in Robin’s morgue.

  On that table, a white sheet covering a body.

  Bryan smelled something new, something he couldn’t identify. He reached out, grabbed the sheet where it covered the body’s toe, then slid it free with a hiss of fabric.

  Bryan heard a soft, distant buzz. Pookie’s cell phone, he knew, but they were both too stunned to pay attention to it.

  The body on the table: naked, lean and muscular. Skin the color of purple grapes. Stomach cut open — a hollow cavity, as all the internal organs had been removed. One leg had been stripped mostly free of muscle, leaving only bones and shreds of meat.

  And the body’s head.

  It could not be.

  The cell phone kept buzzing.

  “Jesus,” Pookie said quietly. “Jesus H. Christ on a crutch, Bryan.”

  The head had a huge, thick bottom jaw as wide as both of Bryan’s fists pressed side to side. Inside that open mouth, lining both the top and the bottom, rows of huge, triangular white teeth.

  Teeth like a shark’s.

  Pookie took a step forward. He reached out a shaking hand, pinced one of the teeth between his thumb and forefinger, then gave an experimental wiggle. The tooth didn’t move. He did it again, harder, and this time the whole head moved in time.

  “That’s not fake,” he said. “Holy shit, man, there’s no way that’s fake. Look at it!”

  Bryan was looking at it — looking at it, and recognizing it. He’d seen those teeth and that skin in his dreams.

  “This guy is real,” Pookie said. “And if he’s real, then I’m guessing the ones in the other room are real, too. Bryan, what the fuck is all this?”

  They fell silent. The buzzing phone demanded attention. Pookie finally noticed. He pulled it out of his pocket.

  “Burns, talk to me.”

  A pause.

  “Fuck,” Pookie said. “Bri-Bri, the jig is up. Erickson is here.”

  Pookie climbed the stairs and turned toward the ruined front door. He saw Black Mr. Burns, gun in hand, standing in the doorway, using his body to block entry. Beyond him, Pookie saw an old man standing on the porch.

  Gotta be Erickson … at least it’s just a seventy-year-old man and not the goddamn archer.

  “Officer Smith,” Pookie said as he approached. “The house appears to be clear.”

  John stepped to the side, gestured to the old man. “This is Jebediah Erickson. He says this is his house, but he doesn’t have any identification.”

  No matter what happened now, Pookie knew that he, Bryan and even Black Mr. Burns were screwed. Why couldn’t Bryan have just backed off? They’d tried, dammit, they’d tried hard, and now Pookie’s career was probably
over for good. His only hope was to try and deal a huge line of bullshit and intimidation to make this go away. Not much of a chance of that working, but he had to give it a shot.

  “I’m Inspector Chang,” Pookie said. “It’s late. Care to explain what you’re doing out of your house at this hour with no ID?”

  “No, I don’t care to explain,” Erickson said. “I don’t need identification to walk outside of my house. Are there any others inside?”

  “Sir,” Pookie said, gesturing to the porch stairs, “why don’t we take a stroll?”

  Erickson pointed to the house’s open door. “Whoever is in there, get them out here right now, or I am calling Amy.”

  Amy. The guy knew Chief Zou on a first-name basis. Yep, they were all fucked good and proper.

  Erickson glared at Pookie. The old man put his hands on his hips. “You’ve tried my patience enough, Officer. If you don’t …”

  His voice trailed off. He turned to stare into the house. Bryan Clauser stood a foot inside the doorway. Bryan’s mouth hung halfway open in surprise, like he saw something he couldn’t understand, couldn’t quite believe.

  Erickson’s expression slipped from indignant anger to thin-lipped, focused rage.

  A blur of motion — something hit Pookie in the stomach. His back smashed into the porch’s thick wooden railing.

  Pookie saw John raising his gun, but Erickson was so fast. The old man spun, landed his heel on John’s temple. John sagged against the house — Erickson reached out and snatched John’s gun before John slid down to his ass.

  Bryan rushed out of the doorway. Erickson raised the gun and fired, getting off one shot before Bryan buried his shoulder into the old man’s stomach. They hit the porch railing and went through it in a spinning whirl of bodies and cracked wood. They fell fifteen feet to the sidewalk below, Erickson landed on his back, Bryan on top of him.

  Bryan reared back to punch, but Erickson’s feet whipped up, black shoes hooking behind Bryan’s head, shins scissoring Bryan’s neck. Bryan grabbed at Erickson’s legs. The old man twisted hard to the left, driving Bryan face-first into the sidewalk.

  Pookie tried to draw a breath, but his stomach wouldn’t respond. Where was his gun? His hand found it and he tried to stand.

  Out on the sidewalk, Erickson snarled as he squeezed his legs tighter on Bryan’s neck. Bryan’s feet kicked, shoes sliding uselessly against the sidewalk.

  Pookie lurched to the broken railing. He still couldn’t breathe. He rested his gun hand on the broken rail.

  Erickson reached his right hand behind his back — when the hand reappeared, it held a Bowie knife.

  Pookie aimed.

  Erickson raised the knife.

  Pookie fired.

  The bullet whinged off the concrete just a half-inch from Erickson’s hip. The old man flinched, his knife thrust paused. Bryan’s left foot kicked forward, the toe driving into Erickson’s mouth and snapping the white-haired head backward.

  Erickson rolled away. Bryan scrambled to his feet, but the old man was faster, raising the knife and rushing forward to swing it down. Bryan’s hands shot up, forearms crossing, catching Erickson’s wrist in the V. Bryan turned and twisted, using Erickson’s momentum against him even as he wrapped his fingers around the old man’s hand.

  Erickson flipped, his back hitting the sidewalk for a second time.

  Bryan now held the knife.

  In that moment, Pookie had a terrifying glimpse of Bryan’s face — that wasn’t his friend, that wasn’t his partner, that was a wide-eyed psychopath. He tried to shout out, to scream no!, but he still couldn’t draw a breath.

  Erickson started to rise. Bryan snap-kicked the old man in the mouth, driving him back down. Bryan closed and knelt, moving so fast — streetlight flashed off the Bowie knife’s blade as Bryan drove it into Erickson’s stomach so deep that Pookie heard the point chink into the concrete beneath the old man’s back.

  Everything stopped. That crazy look vanished from Bryan’s face — now he just seemed confused.

  Erickson struggled, used his elbows to sit up halfway. He looked at the knife handle sticking out of his belly.

  “Well,” he said, “I never planned for this.” His head lolled. He slumped backward and lay still.

  Pookie’s diaphragm finally opened up, letting him suck in a deep, halting breath. John stumbled down the steps, then to Erickson’s side. He examined the wound even as he pulled out his cell phone and dialed for an ambulance.

  Pookie followed, moving down as fast as he could. He saw Bryan stand slowly, saw a patch of wetness soaking the right shoulder of his partner’s black sweatshirt.

  “Bryan! You’re hit!”

  Bryan looked at his shoulder. He grabbed his collar, stretched the wet fabric away to see underneath. “Shit. I think I need a doctor.” He reached his left hand up and squeezed his right shoulder.

  Pookie prayed his hunch was wrong, that Bryan actually did need a doctor, but he didn’t want to take that chance. If Pookie was right and Bryan went to a hospital …

  The sound of handcuffs clicking home drew Pookie’s attention. Black Mr. Burns had cuffed Erickson’s wrists, moved the hands up over the wounded old man’s head.

  “John,” Pookie said, “you got him?”

  John looked up. “He’s hurt bad and he ain’t going nowhere. Ambulance is on the way.”

  It was bad to leave a scene, double bad as they shouldn’t have been here in the first place, and triple bad because Pookie was technically a civilian, but he had to get Bryan out of there.

  Pookie put a hand on Bryan’s back and started guiding him toward the Buick. “Bri-Bri, come on, we gotta go.”

  “Go? Dude, I’ve been shot. I need an ambulance.”

  “I’ll take you to the hospital,” Pookie said. “Way faster, come on.”

  Pookie lightly pushed again, and this time Bryan walked toward the car.

  Tard saw the brown car pull away from the monster’s house.

  And down on the ground, with a knife in his tummy … the monster.

  Tard watched all this in utter disbelief. He looked an awful lot like the tree in which he hid. He didn’t much care for being a tree, because all the bugs crawled into the cracks in his skin. They tickled and sometimes they bit him.

  Sirens blared. Tard hated that noise; it hurt his ears. Down the street he saw cop cars, and … was that?… yes! The pretty, white-and-red amberlamps truck!

  The monster wasn’t moving. A blackish stain slowly spread across his brown shirt. The amberlamps was coming for him, because he was wounded.

  Sly was going to be so excited!

  Sly, Pierre, Sir Voh & Fort

  Ba-da-bum-bummmm

  Rex felt strong arms holding him, cradling him. As he woke, the grogginess faded away — the pain in his belly did not.

  Pain wasn’t really the word for it. He’d felt pain before, courtesy of Roberta, courtesy of Alex Panos and BoyCo, courtesy of Father Maloney. This was something different, something on another level altogether.

  Despite that burning agony Rex Deprovdechuk felt warmth exploding in his chest. He took in a slow, deep breath — so powerful, so relaxing. It felt like when he’d met Marco, but more so.

  ba-da-bum-bummmm

  Rex moved his hand, felt at his belly.

  Wet.

  Wet with blood.

  “You’ll be fine,” said a voice that sounded like sandpaper on rough wood. “The wound is already closing.”

  Rex opened his eyes.

  First, he saw the night sky, black and starless, the clouds above slightly lit up by the streetlights below. He was on the flat roof of a building. Then, Rex saw them.

  He should have been afraid. He knew that. He should have been crapping in his pants, screaming, trying to rise and run, but he wasn’t afraid. Not in the least.

  He recognized them from his dreams and his drawings.

  “Hello, Sly,” Rex said.

  The one with a snake’s face smiled wide. A sn
ake-face, but he looked … young. Smooth features, tiny scales that gleamed with health. A thick body, each motion athletic, confident. He looked like a bodybuilder covered with a rotting gray blanket that hid his bulky form. Only his head was exposed, showing his pointy face with its yellow eyes and angled black irises.

  Sly smiled, a mouth full of needle teeth. He looked at the others. “He knows my name.”

  “It’s thim,” whispered the second something. “It’s thim, I can thmell it!”

  This one was also covered in a threadbare blanket, and he was bigger than Sly. Well, taller anyway, but not as thick. He had a fur-covered face and long jaws, like those of a big dog, but the bottom jaw was a little offset, sticking at a slight angle to the right. His features were also soft, almost like he was in that middle zone between puppy and adult.

  “Hello, Pierre,” Rex said.

  Pierre’s long, pink tongue lolled out the left side of the cockeyed mouth. It dangled, dripping spit down onto the rooftop.

  Behind Pierre, a third something stood. Taller than Pierre, wider than Sly. Rex had never seen anything so big.

  “My king,” it said. The voice was thin and high-pitched. It didn’t seem at home in a body of that size. Rex looked closer and understood why — under its blanket, there were actually two somethings. One was a massive man, like one of those pro-wrestling guys, with a tiny head the size of a large grapefruit atop a wide neck. The other something rode on his shoulders. The little one had a tiny, shriveled baby’s body but a head that would have been normal on an adult. It had spindly legs and arms. It had a tail that wrapped tight around the massive man’s big neck.

  “I don’t know your name,” Rex said to the thing riding on top of the big man.

  “I am Sir Voh,” the big-head said. The end of his tail tapped against the big one’s barrel chest. “And this is Fort.”

  A small moan drew Rex’s attention to another figure lying on the roof.

  Alex Panos.

  Blood covered his face, matted down his blond hair. A torn bottom lip showed the cracked teeth behind it. Rex had never seen a nose broken that bad; a bit of white stuck out from between the eyes, and the rest of it angled sharply to the left.