"Oh, very funny!" he called out. He stood, brushing dirt and pine needles off his b.u.t.t. Syd looked over to his clothes, thought about getting dressed, or at least putting his boots on.

That's some wild streak you got. . . .

Her words echoed back, caustically precise. She knew how to push his b.u.t.tons, all right. Even when he knew she was pushing them. It awakened a compet.i.tive impulse in him in spite of himself, made Syd want to play this game on her terms, and win. To prove something to her, and to himself in the bargain.

Just off to his left the bushes rustled, and Syd caught a fleeting glimpse of flesh. By the time he turned, she was gone. Syd grew quiet, began moving very carefully: toes digging into the moist earth, trying to antic.i.p.ate his every next move.

He took three steps, harpooned himself again.

"Ow!" Syd leapt back, lost his balance and banged his knee on a rock. "Ow! Ow!" The resulting b.u.mbling tap dance landed him face down in the dirt, picking leaves from his teeth. As he sat up, something whizzed through the air, struck him in the back of the head. Syd yelped, whirled, looked.

A pine cone.

Somewhere off to his right, Nora snickered.

"You b.i.t.c.h," he grumbled.

Syd picked more brambles from his heels, then hunkered down and rethought his strategy. He was going about this all wrong, trying to think his way through the woods. He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, taking in the night.

The wind shifted, brought with it dozens of subtle gradations of scent, sweet pine and ripe mulch and rich earth. Syd began moving intuitively, relying more on inner sense to guide him. As he did he realized that every molecule of his body felt energized, alive, a billion tiny sensors embedded in his exposed skin.

Something small stirred and skittered in the underbrush. A twig snapped, some thirty feet dead ahead. He stopped, waiting. Another crackle, maybe three yards farther to the left. Something was moving; it was larger, Nora-sized. Syd crouched, began tracking with it, no longer thinking in terms of point A to point B, but instead seeking the natural trails that abounded. As he did the environment seemed to transform around him, become less hostile. There was no path to speak of, yet one revealed itself with every step, his mind and body focusing down, becoming attuned to the sound of her movement and the flow of the land.

He paced her for several minutes, moving silently, weaving closer. And as he hunted her, Syd was amazed at how good it felt, how liberating it was to roam free through this natural world. His mind felt clear for the first time in ages, unburdened by the baggage of his life, and he marveled that he'd never thought to do it before.

She was just ahead of him. Twenty feet now, maybe less. Up ahead there came a soft burbling sound, richly musical in timbre, suddenly audible under the riffling wind. He hadn't noticed it before, recognized it instantly: the sound of a running stream, trickling down the mountain. Nora was making her way toward it. Syd moved off to the side, flanking her. He would sneak up, catch her at the water's edge, make love to her there.

A dozen paces farther he caught his first shimmering glimpse of the stream. It was shallow and rocky, the stars overhead refracting across its rippling surface; he looked up and saw the sky ablaze through the trees, a billion pulsing diamonds set in satin oblivion, presided over by the radiant moon.

Something moved, not ten feet to his left. Syd froze in his tracks. She was trying to sneak up on him. He crouched down, ducking behind some brittle weeds, readied himself to pounce . . .

. . . and then stopped, suddenly wary. As his hackles raised, set off a thousand tiny alarms . . .

Because something was wrong, completely wrong. In the way the tall gra.s.s crackled and parted around it; the way the woods went deathly silent in its wake.

In the way it moved, on two feet too many.

He listened, confused. And then his heart squeezed tight, a b.l.o.o.d.y fist in his chest, as the realization blossomed klieg light-bright in his skull. Every hair on his body went rigid, erect.

Something was lumbering through the brush. Something huge, hulking. He heard its breath, ragged and panting, as it broke through to the water's edge, began lapping thirstily. The wind shifted, and Syd caught a whiff of dank, matted fur.

Oh G.o.d. Images of the wolf came crashing back, flooding his senses. Oh G.o.d. He backed up, almost stumbled, catching himself. Syd could not see it from where he stood. He prayed it could not see him.

The creature stopped drinking, shook ma.s.sive jowls, stood dripping and silent, the image horribly clear in his mind's eye. Syd unconsciously synced his breathing with its own, trying to mask the sound of his life. Terror blossomed and grew, billowing through his soul. He realized that he had no idea where she was, no way to warn her. He had to get away undetected, find her somehow. . . .

The wind died down, shifted, came back at Syd's back. As it gusted he felt his sweat go chill, making his teeth chatter again. The wind blew on, oblivious, carrying particles of his scent with it.

Blowing toward the stream. Toward the beast.

Oh s.h.i.t, Syd thought. Oh s.h.i.t oh s.h.i.t oh s.h.i.t . . . Ten feet away, a low growl sounded.

And that was it; Syd's sudden oneness with nature went flying out the proverbial window as he took off, desperately trying to escape.

The woods reverted instantly: turning on him in the blink of an eye, becoming an endless implacable barrier. Roots and rocks rose up to trip him; branches clawed at his flesh; trees loomed and threw themselves in his path. Syd glanced back, caught a flash of feral eyes, heard the sound of ma.s.sive limbs, tracking him off to the right.

He could feel it bearing down on him, thought crazily of the tire iron in the trunk of his car, his car that was parked in a distant galaxy, the car he'd never see again. I'm not afraid, he tried to tell himself, fooling no one. He was scared out of his mind, a mind that was already filled to br.i.m.m.i.n.g with grisly images: the shock of its stinking bulk slamming into his back, the hideous razored rending as its murderous teeth closed on his throat. Syd scrambled, veering off the path, plowing through a thicket, adrenaline obliterating the pain.

It was almost upon him. Syd vaulted over a fallen tree, landed badly, his left foot striking a root and throwing him off-balance. Syd screeched and toppled, landing painfully on his shoulder.

And he knew in that instant that there was no way to escape, nothing to do but die, or die fighting. His mind shrieked and spun. Syd scrabbled to his feet, grabbed a chunk of branch the size of his forearm from the ground. It was solid enough, with a three-inch spike of jagged limb protruding from one end, a primitive war club. Syd raised it high as he braced himself, then turned to face his attacker: the fear focused to one point, let loose in a wild, primal cry. . . .

Nothing happened.

There was no moment of sickening impact. No flash of slavering jaws. No Wild Kingdom battle-to-the-death. There was just an elongated nightmare moment as Syd stood, trembling, locked in a lethal last-stand stance. Ready to kill the next thing that moved.

But there was nothing chasing him.

Nothing chasing him at all.

"SYD?" Nora's voice, calling from the darkness. "SYD!"

"NORA! GET AWAY!!".

Something cracked behind him; Syd screeched and did a frantic pirouette.

It was Nora, stepping from the darkness. She approached, her voice tense, wary. "Syd, are you okay?"

"There's something out there," he said, searching the shadows, the club still tight in his hand. "Something was after me."

She peered in the direction he pointed. "Well," she said. "Whatever it was, it's gone now."

Again, that unmistakable amus.e.m.e.nt. It poured fuel on his flayed and burning nerves, left him agitated, incensed. There was nowhere to focus the anger, no one to train it on but her.

"What's the matter with you?" he cried, pulling away, glaring. "Are you f.u.c.king deaf? Didn't you hear it??"

Nora remained unfazed. "All I heard was you, running around and screaming like a maniac."

"IT WAS OUT THERE!!".

Nora said nothing, let the evidence speak for itself. Syd stood panting for a few moments more, before it became clear that she was right. It was gone now. His adrenaline eased off by degrees, leaving a profound exhaustion in its wake.

Nora stepped closer, put her hand on his shoulder. He flinched. "s.h.i.t, Syd, you're bleeding," she said. "Here, put that thing down and let's get out of here." She went to take the club, found Syd would not release it, his hand still humming with unspent survival instinct.

It took her almost a minute to get him to drop it; the moment he did, it was as though the remainder of his strength leeched away. Syd deflated into her, suddenly woozy, hollow, fragile as a reed.

"It was out there," he insisted. "It was right behind me."

Nora nodded, neither believing nor disbelieving, but merely accepting his experience. She slipped a supportive arm around him, buoying his sagging bulk.

"C'mon," she said. "Let's get you home."

16.

He remembered very little of what followed next: fragmented images, bits of experience. They arrived back at his place sometime around three A.M. Nora had driven, Syd being in no condition. He remembered being helped up the stairs; led to the bathroom. He remembered the shower, mud and blood swirling together, brown spirals curling down the drain. He remembered her warm hands helping him into the bed, tucking him in tight because he honest to G.o.d didn't have the strength to pull the blanket up himself He remembered asking if she was coming to bed with him, her replying that she'd be there soon.

And then he was gone, descending into a bright wash of dream-river current, where a million flickering images of crazy dream-logic rushed over him, like rainbow fish in an endless succession.

It was there that Syd first began to perceive how deeply his world was changing. How the freight train of destiny he'd sensed last night was already mowing him down. Unconscious, barraged by images he kept secret even from himself, Syd absorbed the colors of understanding, uninterrupted by the tyranny of the mundane.

While in the living room, Nora stepped into another world entirely.

There is that one amazing second, when you watch a thing spin out of control, and you know exactly what is going to happen. You can calculate where it is going to hit, how fast and how hard, and you can even begin to visualize the extent of the damage. The only thing you can't do, in fact, is stop the collision from happening.

The most amazing second was the one in which you knew it was too late.

Nora watched the bottle drop, and got that old familiar shiver. Like liquor, death, and o.r.g.a.s.m, it was a feeling she never got used to, no matter how many times it happened: a sensation so potent it obliterated all prior experience of it, coming each time fresh and new. From the moment the bottle slipped between her fingers, she could feel the voidrush in her spine, whirling vertiginously in her throat and her bowels.

"f.u.c.k!" she spat, weaving slightly as she danced out of shrapnel range. The bottle exploded, in terrible confirmation of her fear. She watched the liquid plume, the gla.s.s shards disa.s.semble and soar. Half-empty, half-full, it clearly no longer mattered. What it was, was all over the place.

"s.h.i.t!" she hissed, her eyes on the shards and the spreading stain. She didn't know if she was more angry with the bottle for breaking, herself for dropping it, or the floor for being so G.o.ddam hard. She was simply, suddenly infuriated; her anger flaring like a pyromaniac's wet dream, squirting colorful light and dangerous fire in every direction.

Then it dissipated: an emotional impulse with the life span of a glorious one-shot firework display. And when the last sparks had fallen to earth, she was left with nothing but the emotion that preceded, and that emotion was inescapably dread: a vast and all-encompa.s.sing fear, huge as the universe itself, dark and exquisite and born of experience. It was the backdrop for everything she knew, and everything she felt. It was her emotional bottom line.

By the time the red mist and green dust had settled, Nora was crying again.

Of course, this was nothing new. Crying was something Nora did quite a bit of lately. She'd been fighting the impulse practically from the moment Syd had crashed, telling herself everything is fine, he's doing great, it's going to work this time. But being left alone with her thoughts and his things was probably not the greatest idea; she'd learned enough about his history to infuse them with meaning, and meaning inevitably equaled pain.

But that was the way it always went, as much a part of the pattern as the need to feed. It was emotional damage that made the nightmare come alive: emotional damage, and the scars that it left behind. And Syd's spartan waystation at the crossroads of life was crawling with artifacts, regardless of how stripped-down he believed his world to be. The evidence was everywhere. She'd smelled it from the second she walked in the door.

Like his music collection, for example. It was the one thing he claimed was completely his own; but, of course, he was completely mistaken, because Karen had sprayed all up and down those old vintage LPs, left her scent on every CD case and speaker cone. Every time he listened to any of the music he'd picked up in the last ten years, it would throw him right back on the time they'd spent together: the fighting, the f.u.c.king, the moments of peace, and all the pa.s.sion he'd ever invested in their love. That b.i.t.c.h had left her mark on them as surely as if she'd scratched her initials directly into those black vinyl grooves and iridescent discs.

And the same went for everything else in his life, from the clothes he wore to the car he drove to the comforter on his bed. Even tonight's dinner dishes, which still sprawled across the kitchen table. Even after flavoring them with the herbs necessary for Syd's awakening-yohimbe and kava kava, cannabis indica and damiana-Nora could still smell Karen in every hand-me-down plate and utensil. Did he have any idea how hard it was for her to eat under those circ.u.mstances? Much less make love on those sheets?

She felt the anger flicker back, but it was quickly subsumed by sadness. She picked an alb.u.m blind, going more on smell than on musical taste, not even caring what it was, just needing to hear something that was post-Karen, something they'd never listened to together. It wasn't easy.

She got a grip on herself, began cleaning up the mess, her hands trembling as she handled every jagged piece. The fact was, she wasn't mad at Syd at all. And today had been nothing if not hopeful. Her instincts were right about him; she could feel it. And Christ, his potential notwithstanding, Syd was the first guy she'd found that she actually liked since . . .

Since Michael. The words came up unbidden. Since Michael. Up from the nowhere place that she tried so hard to bury. Even now, as the tears burned her eyes, and the sorrow welled up in her so huge that she thought she would surely burst, there was no stopping the voice when it came.

Since Michael died.

And that was when the music came up to smack her, with a gentle wash of tremolo guitar. It was an old blues tune, something off a soundtrack to a movie she'd never even seen. It was amazing how cruel background music could be, how brutally ironic and synchronistically apropos.

The name of the song was "The Dark End of the Street," a tune that she'd heard a million times or so. She didn't know who was singing this time, and didn't care. The voice was rich and raw and soulful, and it collided perfectly with the pictures that had crept back into her mind, sent her reeling down her own private memory lane. . . .

"At the dark end of the street That is where we always meet.

Hiding in shadows, where we don't belong Living in darkness, to hide a wrong You and me, at the dark end of the street.

You and me."

She had met Michael on an Amtrak luxury liner, heading from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to succulent, intoxicating New Orleans. Grabbing the train was a sudden stroke of inspiration, at a time when she'd desperately needed one; after that f.u.c.king incident in Las Vegas, with the imitation redheaded strippers and the leaking generic garbage bags, it had been time to put some serious distance between herself and Vic. Besides, she loved Amtrak; it was a great way to see the country, the only form of long-distance transit other than driving that let her feel somehow connected with the earth.

Michael was a handsome Italian drifter and ne'er-do-well, long ago of Brooklyn sp.a.w.ned and never quite released from the bounds of that distinctive macho stance. Forty years old and displaying it proudly, very definitely holding on to his looks, he was far and away the pick of the Amtrak litter that weekend. He had been traveling since Seattle, spending almost all of his time in the bar car on the downstairs level of the double-decker train.

From the moment their eyes met, she knew he was special. Everything about him gave off that instinctive alpha male pheromone rush: his amused confidence, his complete sense of self-possession, his innate ability to intimidate lesser males simply by ordering a beer or strolling through the car. She'd noticed it instantly; the fact that the furtive leers and pickup vibes evaporated around her the minute she started talking to him told her everyone else knew it, too.

Nora was charmed by the fact that he didn't hit on her, even though his attraction to her was crystal clear. h.e.l.l, he could even admire her strategic flashes of thigh and cleavage and not lose his train of thought as they talked.

And talk they did: for hours upon hours, long after thesun had set and on, as the train rolled through miles of endless black night. Getting to know each other. Revealing themselves by degrees. By the time she dragged him back to her sleeper, she had all but decided.

The first night confirmed it. Michael was an astonishing lover, devout and confident, with great strong hands and a pa.s.sionate mouth and an artist's appreciation of what made her erotic mechanism tick. Better than Syd. Maybe better than Vic. Certainly better than the Vic she'd fled.

It was hard not to succ.u.mb and give herself over to the Change, in those first few nights-his dense and knowing c.o.c.k drove her crawling mad-but the hurtling metal walls were close, and she knew that if she let herself go there'd be no stopping it, and she'd have to kill just to cover her tracks. There were two hundred and thirty-seven pa.s.sengers on board. It was easier to just rein in the beast. But G.o.d did he make it hard. . . .

"I know that time is gonna take its toll We have to pay for all the love we stole It's a sin, and we know it's wrong But our love keeps comin' on strong Steal away to the dark end of the street You and me."

The beautiful thing was, he was already a small-time grifter and criminal; there was no need to soft-pedal the seamier aspects of the life. He'd done time, so the realities of the cage didn't need to be spelled out for him. By the time they landed in New Orleans, she believed that she had finally found the man of her dreams. All she had to do was take his monster out for a little run in the dark.

St. Louis Number I was a huge old standing cemetery on Rampart Street, on the border of the French Quarter. There, against a tableau of whitewashed marble and burnt red mausoleum brick, she set Michael's animal spirit free. They fed that night on thugs and vagabonds, gloriously rampaging amongst the dead.

Michael was a natural, and his grat.i.tude knew no bounds. Together, they spent two glorious months on the run, conquering each hurdle in his evolution with savage grace and surprising ease. She cultivated and nurtured his b.e.s.t.i.a.l side, trained him in the ways of the hunt. His killer instincts, never buried far beneath the surface, emerged full-blown and formidable. When Vic came-and it was only a matter of time, she knew-Michael would be ready. There was no doubt in her mind.

And he, in turn, was good to her: treating her the way she'd always wanted to be treated, the way she'd always wished Vic would have known enough to treat her. He didn't go chasing after every little b.i.t.c.h he saw. He knew that he would never find another Nora. He loved her totally, worshipped her without kissing her a.s.s, and she had never felt more happy or alive.

But, of course, it was too good to last. . . .

"They're gonna find us They're gonna find us They're gonna find us, love, someday You and me At the dark end of the street."

Vic finally caught up with them in Mississippi, on a night so swollen and miserable with heat that the sweat beaded thicker than blood on your skin. He ambushed them out back of a zydeco shack, upwind and completely off-guard. They were drunk on bourbon, Cajun stomp, and each other. Michael fought like h.e.l.l, but in truth he never even had a chance. She blamed herself; there just wasn't enough time before he had to put it to the test. The look in his eyes when Vic's jaws closed on his throat would haunt her for as long as she lived: not so much one of pain as a terrible, infinite regret.

She had slashed Vic then, with murderous intent: a razored divoting rake across his face, showering Michael's agonized countenance with a red rain not his own. It was the first time she'd ever taken a real shot at Vic, for all their years of fighting; and it was very nearly the last thing she ever did. Only Michael's last dying efforts saved her, keeping Vic busy disemboweling him just long enough for Nora to get away.

And even now, when she closed her eyes, she could see that road stretching out before her. A road made bleary by a river of tears and the terrible fear that there was no hope at its end. She could remember it all as if it were yesterday.

She could still hear Michael's screams.

"And when the daylight hour rolls around And by chance we'll go down the town If we should meet, just walk, walk on by Oh darling, please don't you cry Tonight we meet At the dark end of the street."

Nora leaned hard against the sink, bracing herself against the sorrow, the wracking sobs that would not stop no matter how hard she tried. There was no defense against the sadness when it came, no way to fend off or reason with the pain. And not enough booze in the world to drown it in.