The door eased shut again-slowly, slowly-and for Syd Jarrett, there was a fifteen-second slice of infinity when all Creation was reduced to that narrowing gap. Watching the darkness as it winnowed down to nothing. Then gone.

Then gone.

As if from a distance, he felt the world start up again without him: disaster averted, and on with the show. Somebody laughed, too loud; it was almost like a signal. All at once, the muted buzz gave way, the party resuming in earnest.

Syd just stood there. Silent. Thrumming. Paralytic with shock and pain. The jukebox came on, abrupt and staring. Billie Holiday. "Tain't n.o.body's Business If I Do." Underneath the boisterous relief of the crowd, the clinking gla.s.s and c.h.i.n.kling change, Syd felt his nerve endings begin to unravel, his heart crisp and shrivel inside his chest.

"Syd." Voice first, then the hand on his shoulder. Syd recoiled from the touch, his eyes aflame.

He began to shake his head.

"C'mon, man." He felt Jules behind him, trying to steer him back to the bar. "You gotta let it go. . . ."

"No." Syd growled, wrenching suddenly free. There was violence in the gesture. It was barely restrained. Jules stepped back, staring into those burning eyes.

And for the first time in ten years of friendship, Jules was afraid of him.

Syd smelled the fear, found it strangely exhilarating. The killing rage hurtled forth like a living force, a separate ent.i.ty with a mind and a will all its own. Yes, it said. You SHOULD be afraid. You should ALL be afraid . . .

. . . and then it struck him that no: not them. There was only one who should have such reason to fear . . .

. . . and then he was moving, hitting the door with both hands, sending it slamming back to crash against the wall as his feet smacked gravel and his eyes scanned the biting black air. Thinking sonofab.i.t.c.h, I'm gonna rip right through you. I'm gonna tear you to f.u.c.king shreds . . .

. . . and then he spotted them, at the far end of the parking lot: Vic, closing the pa.s.senger side door of a battered sedan; Nora inside, head down, shoulders slumped. They were maybe sixty feet away. Vic looked up, saw Syd coming, ignored him.

"HEY!" Syd called out, moving faster now, the killing rage singing in his blood as he crossed the parking lot.

"HEY, YOU!".

Vic waltzed around the front of the car, heading for the driver's side. The thought that Nora was afraid made him crazy; the idea that she was scared for him sent Syd clear over the top. Syd himself felt no fear, only a terrible clarity of purpose.

"HEY!!!".

Twenty feet now, and Vic still showed no sign of response. Adrenaline surged through Syd's system: every cell humming in antic.i.p.ation, restless for impact.

Ten feet, five. He could practically taste his blood "MOTHERf.u.c.kER, I'M TALKIN' TO YOU!!!"

He got there just as Vic reached the driver's door. Nora called out Syd's name; it was lost beneath the roaring in his ears as his left hand snaked out, grabbed Vic's shoulder, spun him around . . .

. . . and then the air itself changed, became violent, as Vic whirled, face gone liquid and wickedly distorting, mad eyes alight with a ravening flame as the mouth grew wide and kept on growing, lips blackening and peeling back to reveal so many, many teeth . . .

. . . and the teeth, like ivory stilettos, flicking up to fill jaws far too huge to believe. Jaws that stretched and sprouted from the terrible no-longer-human face: long snout long jaws long gleaming spikes that snarled and snapped like a bear trap full of bayonets.

Syd stumbled back, his boot heels skidding on the loose-packed gravel, his tumbling a.s.s-backwards on the stony ground. Nora screamed. Syd's eyes rolled back, as the dark shape descended . . .

. . . and then Syd felt the teeth graze the soft skin of his cheek: light enough to tickle the stubble there, sharp enough to break the skin. Just a nip. A warning.

And then they stopped.

Syd's blood thudded painfully in his temples, as his eyes refocused, fixed on the figure before him. There was a disorienting moment as the form seemed to glitch and shift in the darkness, like a rippling man-sized hole in the night.

Then Vic was standing by the car door again: his features his own, recognizably human. There was no mistaking the smile on his face.

"You may not believe it, punk, but this is your lucky night.

"You get to live."

Vic hopped into the car, started it up. Syd tried to stand, couldn't. The sedan wheeled around, spun out, took off, sending back a shower of gravel and grit.

Syd coughed and sputtered as the big car pulled away, his vision blurred and blinded. He couldn't read the license or make or model, couldn't even see the back of Nora's head through the frost-encrusted window.

By the time he could see or breathe again, the sedan was but a glowing blur on the crest of the hill. And by the time he stood, it was gone completely: swallowed by the night, and the road, and the cold. Taking Nora with it.

And leaving Syd shaken. Defeated.

Alone.

24.

The next several hours were a groggy, broken man's descent: a drunken tumble down the well of madness and despair.

Syd sat near the end of the bar, his eyes staring at some distant receding horizon while his sight turned wholly inward. There was no shortage of torturous images there, no dearth of painful memories and excruciating might-have-beens. They collided in his head with a shower of sparks where his dreams of the future used to be.

And-indestructibly burning at the center of it all-was the prismatic, multifaceted image of Nora. An image that radically shifted from one moment to the next, depending on exactly where he stood. As the hours pa.s.sed, his mind moved constantly, viewing her from every conceivable direction. Trying to get a fix on who she actually was, the better to grasp the parameters of the vacuum she'd left behind.

There was Nora the catalytic agent and life-changing force: sweeping out the dead wood of his shipwrecked life, urging him to rebuild and set back out to sea. There was Nora the party animal c.u.m fertility G.o.ddess: reawakening in him a boundless, transcendent appet.i.te for life. There was Nora the vulnerable and tragic enigma, caught mysteriously weeping in the middle of the night. There was the dominant Nora, built of thunder and flame. The submissive Nora, led away on a chain.

And then there was the new face he had only seen tonight. The secretive face.

Of the Nora who lied.

And that was the bottom line here, wasn't it? That she had f.u.c.king lied to him: about her supposedly broken-up relationship with Vic, and G.o.d only knew what else. That Syd was ultimately nothing more than a pit stop on a long and twisted road that those two would probably be traveling forever.

The wounded part of him desperately needed to believe that was true. To think anything else was entirely too painful, pointed far too many fingers back in his direction. How could he have been so stupid, so utterly suckered by his own desperate hunger? Against his better judgment, against all sense or reason, she had breached the defenses of his little fortress of one. He had let her in.

And she, in turn, had released something within him.

And that was the point where his sanity threatened to skid completely out of control, go careening off into the uncharted abyss. Because something very weird had happened in the parking lot, and in one incandescent nightmare flash Syd had borne witness to something that he could neither accept nor deny. Acceptance was tantamount to deciding that yes, the world really was flat, after all, and there really were monsters waiting just over the edge, ready to eat you up. It was stupid. It was impossible. It was simply too much.

And if anyone had told him that three days ago, he would have laughed.

But he had seen it, and the certainty of the vision was a red-hot poker thrust into the deepest folds of his brain, igniting that long-hidden itch. Missing pieces of the lost weekend suddenly jigsaw-clicked into place. And Syd's reality, already frayed at the edges, began to unravel entirely.

As he recognized the face Vic had revealed.

The face so much like the creature in his dreams . . .

"No," he said quietly, feeling a lid of denial slam down in his head, sealing off the knowledge. "No," he repeated, fighting his way back to the room in which he sat. He reached for his bottle, trying to insulate himself from himself with alcohol. His hand trembled as he brought it to his lips.

He looked around the room. The rest of the patrons at the bar kept a respectable distance; whatever they were saying about him, they were keeping it amongst themselves. And Jules was simply Jules: a silent, beneficent presence behind the bar. He didn't hover nearby, didn't say a word; but every time Syd's bottle emptied, a full one mysteriously appeared in its place.

There were some critical things to be said between them: explanations and, even more important, apologies. But it was tough for Syd to even think about Jules, and way too soon for them to talk. The fact that Jules understood this-that Jules was so fundamentally cool-only made it that much harder. It underscored what an a.s.shole Syd had been, how completely undeserving of such consideration.

So when it came down to last call, and Jules suggested that Syd stick around for a couple, the offer was gratefully accepted.

It was twenty minutes to two.

The Yellow Shutter Inn was a low-slung cinderblock structure r.i.m.m.i.n.g the tarmac of Route 18 just north of Atlasburg. It advertised both half- and full-night rates, with a mid-afternoon "executive special" for the lunch-hour quickie; its rooms boasted water beds, mirrored ceilings and in-room p.o.r.n, and reeked of industrial-strength disinfectant and spent l.u.s.t; its parking was discreetly situated away from prying eyes, around the back.

All in all it was a sleazy little affair, and its stock-in-trade was sleazy little affairs: marital infidelities and workplace flings, with the odd pickup or truckstop trick filling out its nightly roster of seamy couplings and low-rent fantasies. The clientele as a rule wanted two things: to get kinky, and to not get caught. As such, they tended to a.s.siduously ignore both the faces of those who shacked up next door to them and the noises they made from behind those closed doors.

Which was exactly why Vic had chosen it.

It was one forty-five when he sat down on the edge of the bed to pull his boots back on. He was mindful to keep the sloshing to a minimum, not that it really made much difference. Nora was deep in Noraland: her body gone fetal on the bed, her brain blasted into oblivion.

They'd been there a little over two hours: long enough to complete the preliminaries of round one, namely re-establishing dominance.

The no-tell motel had been part inspiration, part calculation: under other circ.u.mstances he would have killed Nora's little hero on the spot and hiked it over the nearest state line, then dealt with her mood in due time. But the b.i.t.c.h had gone and made her little power play, and that had complicated matters. For one thing, Vic knew that she wasn't kidding. Worse yet, she'd dissed him in front of the whole bar: daring him to show his true self, just begging him to make a mess. As if she was just itching to blow their cover, bring things crashing down around them. As if he would ever actually let her get away with it.

No, no, he thought. Not like that. Granted, he was p.i.s.sed enough to consider it as they pulled out of the lot, what with that little dips.h.i.t following them out and all. And Nora's att.i.tude as they hightailed it down the highway made it even harder: she sulked and drank and stared out the window so sullenly that it was all he could do to keep from yanking her chain clean out.

He diddled with it absently as the miles unwound before them, one long arm slung over the seat back, inches away but not touching her. Not yet. They drove on in silence for a while, covering distance, merging with the night. When he offered her the bag of pharmaceuticals she absently grabbed a handful, washed them down with a long pull off the bottle he conveniently provided.

He told her he'd missed her. She said nothing. He joked that fun was fun, and she'd given him a good run this time. His voice was all honey and ground gla.s.s. He laughed, made a crack about the look on Syd's face at the moment of the Change, wondered absently if he'd loaded his pants in the aftermath. Her silence was deafening.

Little by little, Vic began to burn.

By now they should be at each other's throats: Vic egging her on and fending her off, Nora lashing and snapping to beat the band. It was foreplay, the fight before the f.u.c.k. It got their juices running. It was simply the way it was. Or at least the way it used to be, back in the good old days.

But this . . .

At least the last time, she'd taken a chunk out of him by way of payback. Vic could respect that. But now she just sat, staring and stewing, lost in her own private Idaho. And it was starting to bother him.

"Hey," he said softly. Nora did not look, did not turn. "Hey!" Louder this time.

He gave the chain a perfunctory little jerk; her head whip-cracked around to pin him with eyes at once steely and bright with tears. "Aw, c'mon, baby," he said. "Be nice."

And though his tone went suddenly silken, the words came out laced more with threat than entreaty. Nora looked away, took another drink. Vic shook his head. "Baby, when you gonna learn?" he said.

"You and I belong together."

With that his fingers snaked along the seat back, started working their way through her hair. She bristled, stiffened, staring dead ahead. "There's n.o.body else in the world for me," he said. His fingers probed the wild cascade of hair, found the spot at the base of her skull. Her eyes closed, her whole body tightened like a guitar string being tuned. Gently, with surprising tenderness, he began to ma.s.sage: tracing sensual little hieroglyphs. Nora began to vibrate, in spite of herself.

"And there's no one else for you but me," he said. "You know it's true."

Nora's eyes stayed closed, as a solitary tear stole out and rolled down her cheek. Vic's fingers kept moving, playing her strings. A low moan welled up, halfway between desire and lament. Vic smiled to himself, unseen in the darkness.

And then the Yellow Shutter had appeared like a beacon in the night, and suddenly Vic knew just what to do. Nora waited in the car as he checked them in, and by the time he got her to the room she was resigned enough to accept her discipline, and just wasted enough to want it.

The room was small and tacky, fake pine scent clinging to the fake-leopard wallpaper. Vic ushered Nora in, tossed their bags in behind her. Nora was pliant by then, sh.e.l.l-shocked and d.a.m.ned near comatose. As Vic peeled her clothes off, he caught the first whiff of discharge; the wad of sodden tissue confirmed it.

"Whew, you're ripe," Vic scolded, unable to keep from smiling as he stripped her bare. Nora shuddered, and Vic instantly picked up on it, read her perfectly. "You really think he could do it for you? Huh?" Unclipping the chain, letting it slip to the floor. "Think anybody can?"

He threw her belly-down onto the bed, proceeded to pull the rope from his ditty bag. "b.i.t.c.h," he hissed. "So you're gonna blame me for your problems?" Nora moaned as Vic yanked her legs apart, began to tie her off.

Her arms came next; she offered no resistance as he hoisted them over her head. Vic was thrilled to note that the management had conveniently provided eyehooks, thick steel anchor points bolted deep into the four corners of the bed frame.

I love this place, Vic thought. He finished her off, making sure the knots were nice and tight.

Nora lay bare-a.s.sed and spread-eagled. Her hair hid her face. That was okay. That wasn't the part of her he was primarily talking to. Vic grabbed a pillow and shoved it under her belly, to improve the elevation. The milk-white half-moon hemispheres of her a.s.s rose invitingly before him. Vic beamed. So she wanted him to make a mess; well, okay. The ropes weren't the only things that were nice and tight.

Vic stood and stripped, his erection fiercely throbbing. He crawled back onto the bed, let his face slip down into the dark folds between her legs. Her blood was thick, like honey on his tongue.

He licked one long finger by way of foreplay, wormed it into her a.s.s. Her back door was irised shut, the only part of her that still offered him resistance. Vic withdrew his finger, then spread her creamy cheeks. "It's good to have you back," he said.

Then f.u.c.ked her a.s.s until she bled.

And though at first she tried to hide it, to bury herself in her shadowland and deny him even the tiniest of cries, he could feel her starting to yield. He could feel it in the tremors that rumbled through her flesh, like the shockwaves following an earthquake. He could feel it in the way her sphincter quivered with each successive thrust. As he moved he spoke to her, his mouth close in her ear, invading her mind as he violated her body.

"No one else can do this." He pressed deeper, tearing through her walls. "And nothing else matters." She clenched that much tighter, tried to shut him out. "There's only one thing that matters. . . ."

Fresh blood flowed, easing his pa.s.sage. He could feel it coming, building to a head. Vic wound up, pelvis arching as he leaned in close, his voice as soft as thought. "You belong to me," he told her.

Then rammed the message home.

There was that one final moment of resistance, and then Nora groaned and opened wide to receive him. You belong to me. Her a.s.s bucked and writhed, fighting him even as she surrendered. You belong to me. The last shred of fight was swept away like a sapling in a floodpath as Vic hammered at her, kept hammering until she could resist no more.

Her screams, when he came, were music to his ears.

He lay there afterward, listening to her breath. He was happy, sated. The satisfaction went worlds beyond mere s.e.x. In the end, he knew, it was not about getting off. It was about giving in.

He waited until he was sure she had pa.s.sed out before getting up and cleaning himself off.

As he dressed and sat to pull his boots on, Vic reached back, patted her naked backside. Nora was definitely down for the count. Good girl. Her flesh glistened in the dim light from the bathroom; her sweat smelled of pain and resignation, the sweet funk of defeat. One whiff made him hard all over again.

And just in time, too, he thought. After all, it was just about time for round two.