Dragon Tears (50 page)

Both hands on the gun again, she eased toward the center of the room, wary of knocking something over and drawing attention. But inch by inch, cautious step by step, she became convinced there was nothing in her way.

The room was empty. Mirrored and empty.

As she neared the center, in spite of the unrelenting gloom, she was able to see a dim image of herself to her left. A phantom with her form, moving across the reflection of the fog-gray east-facing window.

Ticktock was not here.

A chaos of Harrys moved along the upstairs hall, gun-bearing clones in dirty rumpled suits, unshaven faces gray with stubble, tense and scowling. Hundreds, thousands, an uncountable army, they advanced abreast in a single slightly curved line, stretching forever to the left and right. In their mathematical symmetry and perfect choreography, they should have been the apotheosis of order. Even glimpsed with peripheral vision, however, they disoriented Harry, and he could not look directly either left or right without risking dizziness.

Both walls were mirrored floor to ceiling, as were all of the doors to the rooms, creating an illusion of infinity, bouncing his reflection back and forth, reflecting reflections of reflections of reflections.

Harry knew he should check room by room as he advanced, leaving no unexplored territory behind him, from which Ticktock might be able to move in on his back. But the sole light on the second floor was ahead, spilling out of the only open door, and chances were that the bastard who had murdered Ricky Estefan was in that lighted room and no other.

Although he was so tired that his cop instinct had deserted him, and simultaneously so jumped-up with adrenaline that he did not trust his reactions to be calm and measured, Harry decided to hell with traditional procedure, go with the flow, ride the wave, and let unexplored rooms at his back. He went directly to the doorway with the light beyond, on his right.

The mirrored wall opposite the open door would give him a look at part of the room before he had to step into the doorway and across the threshold, committing himself. He halted beside the door with his back to the mirrored wall, looking at an angle toward the wedge of the room’s interior that was reflected across the hallway in another length of mirror.

All he could see was a confusion of black planes and angles, different black textures revealed by lamplight, black shapes against black backgrounds, all of it cubistic
and strange. No other color. No Ticktock.

Suddenly he realized that, because he was seeing only part of the room, anyone standing in an unrevealed portion of it but looking toward the door might be at such an angle as to see
his
infinite reflections bouncing from wall to wall.

He stepped into the doorway and crossed the threshold, staying low and moving fast, his revolver held out in front of him with both hands. The hallway carpet did not continue into the bedroom. There was black ceramic tile on the floor instead, against which his shoes made noise, a click-scrape-click, and he froze within three steps, hoping to God he hadn’t been heard.

Another dark room, much larger than the first, what should have been a living room, off the downstairs hall. More windows on the pearly luminescent fog and more reflections of windows.

Connie had a feel for that special oddness now, and wasted less time there than she had in the den off the foyer. The three walls without windows were mirrored, and there was no furniture.

Multiple reflections of her silhouette kept perfect time with her in the dark reflective surfaces, like ghosts, like other Connies in alternate universes briefly overlapping and barely visible.

Ticktock evidently liked to look at himself.

She would like to get a look at him, too, but in the flesh.

Silently she returned to the downstairs hall and moved on.

The big walk-in pantry off the kitchen was filled with cookies, hard candies, taffy, chocolates of all kinds, caramels, red and black licorice, tins of sweet biscuits and exotic cakes imported from every corner of the world,
bags of cheese popcorn, caramel popcorn, potato chips, tortilla chips, cheese-flavored tortilla chips, pretzels, cans of cashews, almonds, peanuts, mixed nuts, and millions of dollars in cash stacked in tight bundles of twenty- and hundred-dollar bills.

While he examined the sweets and salties, trying to make up his mind what he most wanted to eat, what would be the least like a meal of which Grandma Drackman would have approved, Bryan idly picked up a packet of hundred-dollar bills and riffled the crisp edges with one thumb.

He had acquired the cash immediately after he had killed his grandmother, stopping the world with his Greatest and Most Secret Power and wandering at his leisure into all the places where money was kept in large quantities and protected by steel doors and locked gates and alarm systems and armed guards. Taking whatever he wanted, he had laughed at the uniformed fools with all their guns and their somber expressions, who were oblivious of him.

Soon, however, he’d realized that he had little need of money. He could use his powers to take
anything
, not merely cash, and to alter sales and public records to create extensive legal support for his ownership if he were ever questioned. Besides, if ever he
were
questioned, he had only to eliminate those idiots who dared to be suspicious of him, and alter
their
records to insure no further investigation.

He had stopped piling up cash in the pantry, but he still liked to riffle it under his thumb and listen to the crisp flutter, smell it, and play games with it sometimes. It felt so good to know that he was different from other people in this way, too: he was beyond money, beyond concerns related to things material. And it was fun to think that he could be the richest person in the world if he wanted, richer than Rockefellers and Kennedys, could pile up cash to fill room after room, cash and emeralds if he wanted emeralds, diamonds and rubies, anything, anything, like
pirates of old in their lairs and surrounded by treasure.

He tossed the packet of currency back on the shelf from which he’d taken it. From the side of the pantry where he kept food, he took down two boxes of Reese’s peanut butter cups and a family-size bag of Hawaiian-style potato chips, which were a lot oilier than ordinary chips. Grandma Drackman would’ve had a stroke at the very
thought.

Harry’s heart knocked so hard and fast that his ears were filled with doubletime drummning that would probably drown out the sound of approaching footsteps.

In the black bedroom, on black shelves, scores of eyes floated in clear fluid, slightly luminous in the amber lamplight, and some were animal eyes, had to be because they were so strange, but others were human eyes, oh shit, no doubt at all about that, some brown and some black, blue, green, hazel. Unhooded by lids or lashes, they all looked scared, perpetually wide with fright. Crazily he wondered if, by looking closely enough, he would be able to see reflections of Ticktock in all the lenses of those dead eyes, the last sight each victim had seen in this world, but he knew that was impossible, and he had no desire to look that close anyway.

Keep moving. The insane sonofabitch was here. In the house. Somewhere. Charles Manson with psychic power, for God’s sake.

Not in the bed, sheets tossed and rumpled, but somewhere.

Jeffrey Dahmer crossed with Superman, John Wayne Gacy with a sorcerer’s spells and magics.

And if not in the bed, awake, oh Jesus, awake and therefore more formidable, harder to get close to.

Closet. Check it. Just clothes, not many, mostly jeans and red robes. Move, move.

The little creep was Ed Gein, Richard Ramirez, Randy Kraft, Richard Speck, Charles Whitman, Jack the Ripper,
all the homicidal sociopaths of legend rolled into one and gifted with paranormal talents beyond measure.

The adjoining bathroom. Through the door, no light, find it, just mirrors, more mirrors on all walls
and
the ceiling.

Back in the black bedroom, heading toward the door, stepping as silently as possible on the black ceramic tiles, Harry didn’t want to look again at the floating eyes but couldn’t stop himself. When he glanced at them again, he realized Ricky Estefan’s eyes must be among those in the jars, though he couldn’t identify which pair they were, couldn’t, under the current circumstances, even remember what color Ricky’s eyes had been.

He reached the door, crossed the threshold, into the upstairs hall, dizzied by infinite images of himself, and from the corner of his eye he saw movement to his left. Movement that was not another Harry Lyon. Coming straight at him and not from out of a mirror, either, coming low. He swiveled toward it, bringing the revolver around, pressure on the trigger, telling himself it had to be a headshot, a headshot, only a headshot would be sure to stop the bastard.

It was the dog. Tail wagging. Head cocked.

He almost killed it, mistaking it for the enemy, almost alerted Ticktock that someone was in the house. He let up on the trigger a fraction of an ounce short of the pressure needed to squeeze off a shot, and would have made the mistake of cursing the dog aloud if his voice hadn’t caught in his throat.

Connie kept listening for gunfire from the second floor, hoping Harry had found Ticktock asleep and would scramble his brain with a couple of rounds. The continued silence was beginning to worry her.