Halfway to Bobby's house, he chanced a look over his shoulder, expecting to see the creature following him, slithering through the tall weeds and dry grass. It was there alright, but not in the field; it had moved back to where Tony and Bobby had been partying. He stopped and stared, waiting to see what the creature would do. "Bitch!" he shouted at it. He panted and hopped from foot-to-foot, ready to go if it made a move in his direction. He could have sworn it was looking at him, but couldn't be sure in the dark.

"Bitch!" he said, panting and hopping, trying to catch his breath. His heart raced and threatened to burst from his chest. The creature bent down, slowly, as if deliberately, and lifted the remaining half of Bobby in its powerful jaws; the feet and ankles sticking out like chopsticks. It bit down, dropping Bobby's legs to the ground, and sank into the canal.

"Bitch ate Bobby's ass!" Tony yelled to no one. "Bitch ate Bobby's ass!"

He turned and ran through the field, thinking he might just have enough time to get away before the bitch came after him.

Chapter 6.

"Oh no! Oh no! Look out! Look out! It's coming! Run! Get away from here! Grab the children and run!"

The shouting cut through the thick fog of sleep blanketing Sandra Jensen's brain, dragging her into consciousness. At first, the loud voice tried to insert itself into her dream, and she struggled to make sense of it. Had she fallen asleep with the TV on? Were the neighbors fighting again?

She sat up and tried to open her eyes. She felt drugged.

"Oh God, no!"

The loud voice belonged to a man, and he was next to her, in her bed. She struggled to think, to remember what she had done last night, why she had brought a man home.

She got an eye open, and knew immediately she wasn't in her own bed.

"Run! We've all got to run!"

The voice was familiar. She turned to look, the joints in her neck creaked, and saw Detective Lawless, from work. What in the hell am I doing in Detective Lawless's bed?

Then she remembered the restaurant, the wine, dinner, and she had gone home with him. Then she remembered what they'd done in bed and she smiled, opening her other eye. Who would have thought he would be like that? Detective Lawless?

"Look, look what's it's done! Oh! Oh sweet Mary!"

He kicked and flailed his legs as if running from whatever monster frequented his dreams. A sharp kick to the shin convinced her to wake him up. She shook him by the shoulder and said, in a soft voice, "Danny. Danny. Wake up. You're dreaming."

Danny was not interested in waking up.

"Oh Lord! The children, the children!"

He flailed and kicked, striking her shin again. That one will bruise. She moved to a kneeling position by the head of the bed and shook him harder.

It took two minutes of shaking and calling his name to break the stranglehold of his dream. When he finally woke up, he was wide-eyed and terrified. He stared at her without blinking and with such a look that she thought he was still caught in the dream, watching, waiting for some new horror to unfold. Then he blinked and looked at her bare breasts. She glanced at the alarm clock next to the bed: 5:07.

"You had your nightmare again," she told him.

He got out of bed, naked, without a word, and padded to the bathroom. She could hear the facet running. When he returned his face was dripping wet, but he looked awake and sat on the end of the bed, and ran his fingers through his hair.

"Was it the dream?" she asked.

"Yes." His voice was throaty.

"Can you remember any of it?"

"It's almost gone now." He stared at the window, not really looking at it, but trying to see through the thick cloud of his waking consciousness, chasing the final wisps of his dream. "There were children, a lot of them. It was like, they were somewhere they should have been safe."

"A school?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe. It would make sense."

"Why were you there?"

"I was trying to warn them, warn the adults who were supposed to take care of them. At first no one would listen. They looked at me like I was crazy."

He glanced at her, suddenly remembering the night before, where they had met, what they had done. She had pulled a sheet over her breasts and he thought, after everything they'd done the night before, what was there to be modest about?

"You were shouting 'It's coming.' Do you remember what 'it' is?"

"Something terrible was coming," he said. "Something terrible is coming. I can feel it."

"What is it?"

"I don't know, but I'd bet from everything that's been happening the past few days, it's already here. And I think I know where it is."

The air in the room chilled. She pulled the sheet up to her neck and looked at the window, half expecting to see snow flurries blowing in from outside. She didn't want to ask, didn't want to know, but found herself asking anyway: "Where?"

"There's something in the canals."

She shivered. "What do you think it is?"

It was his turn to feel the cold. He crawled into bed and pulled the covers over him, turned on his side, propped his head on a hand and looked at her. "It's gotta be some kind of giant snake. I think it's what killed Weston and Sanchez."

She looked confused. "Giant snake?"

He was wide awake now. "Think about it, think about everything. The way the two men were killed. They were bitten. Everyone that saw the injuries thought that, but no one had the guts to say it."

She nodded.

"Second is the foreign DNA, the 'almost reptilian' DNA, found on Sanchez. The coroner is running tests on Weston, and I'll bet you they'll find the same thing."

She laid on her back and stared at the ceiling.

Lawless continued. "Then there's the hallucination thing that happened to me in the MID building. More snakes."

"And the premonition," she added, still shivering, unable to get warm. "It's so creepy."

He turned on his back and stared at the ceiling with her.

They were quiet for a few minutes. His thoughts drifted from snakes to deputy Sandra Jensen, lying next to him in his bed, naked.

"Do you know how many departmental regulations we violated last night?" he asked.

She giggled, glad to talk about something different, and turned to face him. "How many?"

"Four."

"Really? You counted?" she said, feigning surprise.

"Well, maybe not four. At least two."

"You gonna turn us in, Lawless? Tell the Sheriff what we did?"

"You think Sheriff Wisehart would care?"

"It's election year, he might. Did he ever work the streets or drive patrol?"

"More like rode patrol. I think they were still on horseback when he joined the force."

"He does seem old, doesn't he?"

They chuckled at their private joke. Then she said, "Hey, Lawless. You never told me about your premonition last night."

"Yes I did. It was about the canal looking like a snake, remember? How much wine did you drink, anyway?"

"Funny. I noticed someone kept my glass full all night."

"Just being a gentleman."

"Gentleman my ass. Not the snake premonition, the one you had at the table when you looked like you were having an epileptic attack. You said I was in it."

"Oh, that one. I don't need to tell you about it."

"Why not? You said you would."

"You already know. It happened last night."

She got his meaning and flashed him a smile as big as the Grand Canyon. "You saw us in bed? You pervert!"

"Hey, I don't control them. They just happen."

He turned to face her and fell into her eyes, reached for her waist and said, "Did I say it all came true last night? I meant to say it only partially came true."

"Oh really? There's more?"

He threw the covers off her and kissed her hip, where his hand had been. "There's more, alright."

She moaned, turned onto her back and said, "You're sure perky for an old guy."

After making love, they showered. While he shaved, she made coffee and brought two cups into the bedroom.

He was finishing up in the bathroom when she called out, "Hey, Lawless. What's with the shoes? You got more shoes than a chick."

"Yeah. So what?"

After a moment, she said, "Pretty cool shoe racks. You make these yourself?"

"No. Cost me five hundred bucks to have them put in."

He came into the room in underwear and a T-shirt; she wore a shirt she had pulled out of his closet, as if it was natural for her to do so. He took the coffee from her and sat in a chair, looking at her.

"So how come you got so many shoes?"

"I like shoes."

"No shit. I need some black pumps, got any in size eight-and-a-half?"

"I might." He waited to see what else she would say.

She said, "I hear Willie Brown has a hundred suits."

Willie Brown, a long time California politician known for being a classy dresser, probably didn't have a hundred suits, but he had dozens.

"I heard that when he buys new ones he donates the old ones to the Salvation Army, or something, so he can get a tax write-off. So the Salvation Army has like, thousand-dollar suits that are practically brand new and they sell them for a hundred bucks. You got to be his size, though."

And that was it. He's got eighty-two pairs of shoes in a custom shoe rack and Willie Brown had a hundred suits. So what.

"How old are you?" she asked.

"Forty-one. How old are you?"

"Twenty-five."

"Forty-one," she repeated to herself, as she sipped from her mug. She walked over to where he was sitting and put her mug down, standing close to him. The shirt fell open, he smiled, sat his mug down next to hers.

"You're gonna kill me," he said, as she pushed him onto the bed.

Afterward, they were laying in bed, his head resting on her stomach.

"You're like the Energizer Bunny," she said. "You just keep going and going. Last night I thought I was gonna die."

He smiled, remembering last night again, wondering how he'd managed to do all that, and his cell phone chirped. He looked at the clock, almost seven; he remembered he was supposed meet the divers at eight.

"Ah," he said. "Capital punishment for whoever invented the cell phone." He went off to look for it, found it in his jacket on the back of a chair in the living room. A muffled conversation, then he walked back into the bedroom, his face full of bad news.

"There's been another killing by the canals."

Nothing else was said about his shoes or their age difference. He never got a chance to ask her if she really went to the restaurant last night to meet someone, and if so, was it a man. They didn't talk about their childhoods, family, or how they lost their virginity. He didn't ask if she had a boyfriend. She wanted to know, but didn't ask, how he could be such a good lover when he was such a loner.