Velvet Rain - A Dark Thriller (61 page)

He tried to reach the stairs, and the flames sent him back. Only a second effort drove him through, and he made his way up. Fire seared his skin. His hair nearly caught. He caved at the top, out of breath, the smoke thicker and blacker than below, the heat suffocating. He held up just shy of Lee’s broken door, but when he heard Ray Bishop’s voice—
singing,
for God’s sake—he summoned what strength he still had. He bolted inside, thrusting himself into an abyss of the darkest madness.

Ray Bishop stood at the bed. The man was a fright, his skin blistered and worn and splattered in the blood of his kin. His scar, like the rest of his face, was a sickening worm of open sores. Spittle dribbled from his lips. His soulless eyes betrayed him, for Kain had seen that glassy gaze on the faces of so many; he looked as crazed as Costello. Stiff or not, man or beast, he had fallen to the Turn, his mind lost.
Animal Crackers.

Kain’s heart ached. Lee lay on the bed, her nightshirt ripped open. Her bared shoulders were badly bruised. Blood stained her battered face. Sobbing, her breath came in desperate gasps. She looked to him in terror, begging him to stop this madness, not really believing that he could. Not really believing she would live but a moment longer.

And graver still: the room reeked of gasoline. The bed and the girl were soaked in it … as was the mechanic himself.

“
Drop it.
”

Ray Bishop, or perhaps the thing inside him, grinned. He nodded meekly, as if to capitulate; drew the knife back with hands raised in innocence. He stood cold and brooding. His left pant leg was ragged and torn and stained in blood. His clothes reeked of fuel. He started into a hum, the sound barely audible, and then, without warning, drove the blade into his daughter’s shoulder and sent her into a scream. And before Kain could challenge him, the man moved with the speed of a demon. Ray ripped the blade free and swept it wildly, forcing him back.

“Let her go.”

The man’s laugh was utterly insane.

“
My
woman!
My
wife.” He thrust the knife again. “Come on, drifter. You’re gonna bleed.”

“
Let her go, Ray.
”

“Fuck
me,
” Ray Bishop stammered, shaking his head. “Some people just never goddamn learn.”

“Just the stupid ones,” Kain replied, and slowly brought his right hand to bear. He kept his eyes locked with Ray’s. And when he was ready, gave him a wink.

Ray Bishop twitched. His crazy eyes flittered.

Kain tapped two fingers at his temple.

“What the fuck … what the
fuck
you doin’?”

“The hand,” Kain said, “is quicker than the eye.”

This set Ray off. He uttered a wild cry as he lunged, the knife poised to kill. But a hiccup later—
before
might be more accurate—he nodded as he limped back from the bed. He hovered over his daughter, the gaping wound in her shoulder lost to the past. And just as he started into that practiced grin and readied the knife, Kain was on him.

Kain drove into him, knocking the can on its side and sending them to the floor. They struggled, and Ray dazed him with a vicious butt to the head. The knife came swiftly, and Kain barely got a hand up to deflect it. They rolled on the hardwood, the spilled gas soaking them.

Kain groaned as Ray drew his arm free and sliced into his shoulder. Ray got to his knees and bled him across the left forearm, the pain stinging. As the man brought the knife up for the kill, Kain felt himself coming undone. The room spun in a dream.

Uncertain he could even summon it, he had gambled with the Turn. He had rolled the dice praying its randomness would play to his favor, but it had drained him to the edge of collapse. He was burning up, the throb in his brain striking like a wrecking ball. He had squandered his second chance, and now, in this fiery hell, Lee would die. They all would.

The girl screamed at her father, enough to distract him for an instant. Kain found the will and drove a heel into Ray’s leg wound. The man cried out, and he struck him again; this new agony brought him to his knees. Kain rolled away, the knife coming down in a blur. It just missed him as it stuck in the floor. Ray drew it free, and as he did, Kain leapt with all he could muster. They came down hard, Kain toppling right, Ray left. Ray tripped over the can and landed on his side, the knife ripping into him. He screamed. He tried to rise, but he slipped on the slick floor, driving the blade all the way in. He groaned as he faltered, clawing to get the blade out. But then his crazed eyes fell dead, and his hand went limp. Blood pooled around him.

Lee scrambled from the bed and fell into Kain’s arms. Smoke choked them. The house shook violently as part of the place collapsed. Kain feared the gas would catch before the house settled, but when seconds passed without further incident, they helped each other up. He whirled round to the door, but stopped cold at the creeping flames in the corridor. They were out of time.

“
LEE.
” He steered the girl to the window and struggled to raise it; he could hardly stand. She flung it open, and as she was about to crawl through, she froze. Half the awning was gone. And what remained, ablaze as it was, would likely give at any moment.

“You have to,” Kain said. “You can do this.”

Lee nodded courageously and crawled out. The awning shifted under her weight, and she screamed. Kain followed, the flames rising around them. Again the house shook, nearly delivering them to the hell below. He threw his arm about her and held her tight. It was a good fifteen feet to the ground, pockets of fire all about.

“
I can’t!
” Lee shouted. “
I can’t
—”

Kain felt an icy finger slip along the nape of his neck. It was the laughter. The insane laughter.

He turned to the window, and terror gripped him. The mechanic lay with an arm slung round the gas can, cradling it against his chest as if it were treasure. His eyes were the blackest evil. He held a match between his right thumb and forefinger, not an inch from the spout.

Two seconds later, Ray Bishop lit up.

~ 22

Brikker felt the shudder … the strange displacement in time. It had come quickly and quite unexpectedly, passing in the blink of his eye. Yet there could be no mistake: Richards was alive.

Strong, the useless fool, had finally made it inside. But now he stood at the base of the burning veranda again, with no way in. Five, perhaps six seconds had Turned, mere breaths, and when Brikker saw the girl climbing from the upstairs window onto that faltering awning, just as he had seen, he realized that Richards’ gamble had been for naught, that nothing had changed and all was lost. In a moment, the man would follow, and but seconds later, the explosion would come.

Strong, like the beast inside who had started the fire, would perish quickly—he had seen that, as well—but so would the girl.

And so would Richards.

As if on cue, he appeared out of thin air, the grand magician himself, and they held each other on that crumbling platform as the farmhouse began to collapse.

Seconds later, it exploded.

~ 23

Lynn Bishop felt the hiccup; it had come and gone in a heartbeat. She was certain she had seen the man with the gun make his way inside, but now he was standing outside again. Precious seconds passed as more of her home began to collapse, and she watched in horror as her little girl climbed from the window onto the burning awning. The thing shifted one way and back, nearly sending Lee to her death, and only when she saw Kain emerge did she believe—for an instant at least—that God might spare them.

She died inside. She wanted to call out, but she couldn’t. Not with Brikker twenty yards away.

The house rocked, and Kain held her little girl.

“
Jump,
” Lynn whispered. “
Jump … jump … JUMP
—”

~ 24

The girl didn’t have time to scream.

Kain drove into her with everything he had, driving her through the flames and over the edge of the awning. The blast wave struck them in that instant, thrusting them several yards forward, shrapnel and fire and all manner of hell coming with them. The din was deafening; half the roof blew skyward in grand fireworks. Burning debris struck the ground like missiles. They came down in the drive clear of any grassfire, but Lee-Anne struck hard, crying out as her left tibia fractured under her weight. She rolled like a rag doll, arms flailing, and came to rest in a heap. Kain spun head over heels and came crashing down on his back, the impact winding him. He nearly passed out.

Strong was not so fortunate. On the veranda with his gun poised when the blast hit, the explosion severed the awning, and it came down in a mass of flames. He dove back, but it was too late. The awning struck him and pinned his legs. He screamed from the agony, and then screamed again as the fire took him. His plainclothes went up like paper, his arms thrashing, and in a few seconds, his whole body was consumed. A bullet later, the screaming stopped.

The farmhouse shook, the thing finally giving in, the upstairs coming apart. There was a great rumbling from the conflagration, and then the left side of the home collapsed. The ground trembled. Smoke filled the sky and blacked out the stars. Fires here and there spread to the road and into the fields. The oak had spent its fuel and now smoldered. The Chevrolet looked as if a bomb had hit it.

Several dark moments passed. Kain could barely feel anything but pain, could hardly see at all for the burning in his eyes. When the smoke cleared just enough, he found Lee-Anne, the girl lying deathly still but a few feet away. A thick shard of glass was lodged in her arm, the wound bleeding badly. Her left leg was horribly twisted, her tibia threatening to pierce her skin. He called out to her, called again in desperation, and finally her eyes flittered open. She groaned weakly. She tried to move, but when she pressured her leg, she let out a horrible cry.

“
It’s broken,
” the good Doctor said.

~ 25

Kain Richards closed his eyes.

Sometimes, when it came—that
voice,
cold and cutting, like a knife—it was all he could do to slam a black door in his mind and climb inside the darkness. As if not to see was not to hear … not to believe. He wanted so desperately for it to be gone; for it to wither and die and never ever return. He could try to imagine a better place, where such things were but nightmares spawned from the whims of fiction, but no. The nightmare was real; the creeping
thing
in his closet was real. In his mind’s eye, he could discern its tenuous outline, the fleeting shadow within the shadows. He could feel the lazy pulse of its hideous eye, the rise and fall of the glow of the cigarette, bearing down on him; could smell its tease, as if he himself were pleasuring in it. He could taste it. He could taste it. He trembled, so cold. He could die in his madness, and a dark part of him had prayed for it, for as long as he could remember. Slowly, uncertainly, he opened his eyes. The world was a dizzying blur of sound and sight, both fading quickly, and he succumbed to the terrifying truth. Upon him, there would be no merciful judgment, no quick and painless death: the evil was here, waiting as it always was, in the guise of a man. His tormentor … his jailor.

Brikker towered above him. His slight shape was dark and menacing, as it had always been. Dressed not in crisp lab coat but in simple street clothes, he stood deliberately with his back to the flames, throwing himself in stark silhouette—precisely as Kain had foreseen—and only when he turned just so did the madman reveal his self. His skin, normally unusually white, was now ashen, blistered and cracked. His thin lips bled from open sores. His breathing was heavy and uneven. The flickering firelight played tricks with that singular eye, granting only the barest hint of its existence. One could be forgiven for believing it was never really there.

But that voice was. It was.

“You really shouldn’t,” Brikker said, and he said it to the girl. “You’ll only cripple yourself.”

Kain fought the pain. He started to rise, but Brikker set him back, quickly drawing a small service pistol from the shouldered holster buried in his jacket. The man wouldn’t kill him, certainly, but wouldn’t hesitate—and take great pleasure—in incapacitating him. A bullet to the knee, maybe … or both.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” Brikker said.

The girl shuddered as the one-eyed man moved closer.

“Leave her alone, you sick bastard.”

Brikker regarded him only briefly, then knelt behind her. He moved somewhat awkwardly, as if his muscles ached. Lee tried to move away, but all she could do was cry out as her busted leg gave under her.

“Shhhhh,” Brikker whispered, and put his hand to her long, fine hair. He stroked it gently, let it slip through his thin fingers. “Such lovely hair. So lovely … it would be an indignity to lose it.”

“It’s me you want, Brikker. Leave her out of this.”

“She’s already
in
this,” Brikker blared. He brought a hand to his face, his nails sharp razors that glistened in the orangey light. He led his touch along his worn and fractured skin. “Look around you. You can
smell
the carnage you’ve wrought.”

As if Brikker had thrust it with a thought, a blast of static struck, a massive charge far more debilitating than any prior. Kain endured it, slipping to his side in agony. He rocked. Everything was spinning. He was drowning in the din.

“Curious,” Brikker whispered, matter-of-factly. He rose, examining the drifter more closely. “I could take it all away, Number Three.”

Kain glared at him. “Stay away from me.”

“Kain—”

“… It’s all right, Lee.”

“
Why don’t you leave us ALONE!
”

The girl’s explosion—and Kain knew it—had been a grave mistake. Brikker missed not a heartbeat, driving a boot into her broken leg. The shattered bone breached the skin, and Lee-Anne screamed. Kain was already staring down the pistol’s barrel before he could move.