Dylan (Bowen Boys) (22 page)

“No, not back then anyway. I was trying
my best to go on the straight and narrow. I’d never killed anyone before that,
but he knew my background and everything else about me, including my record. He
said that this would be my first test of many.”
She laughed
through their link.
“It was a test all right. I was arrested when I went to
the police to report him.”

He waited for her to continue, knowing
that it would be a good one. When she shifted on the chair, he tensed, waiting
for the vampire on the bed to rise. But when she continued with her story, he
relaxed again.

“That was the test, you see. He’d given
me all the information and the gun I needed to carry out the job. I was to go
into a house, kill the man on the bed, and leave without setting off any of the
alarms. When I went to the police and told them my side of the story, I was
arrested, and when he found out, he had them put me in a cell. He showed up an
hour later.”
She was quiet for a little while.
“They put me in this small room with a
mirror. I’d done enough stupid stuff in my short life as a criminal that I knew
there was someone on the other side, so I sat there and closed my eyes. When
someone kicked my chair out from under me, I leapt up, tossed the man to the
floor, and put his gun to his head. Do you know what he did?”

Dylan laughed when she did.
“He
kicked your ass. Or did he laugh at you? I’m guessing that he was a cop or
something like that. Who was he?”
Dylan would bet that the younger Jack was
much more volatile than this one.

“His name was Wilton Guzman and yes, he
was something of a cop. He was an agent for the CIA, and they were doing some
recruiting in the area, and my foster father had told him about me. He told me
if I let him up without hurting him, he’d have something to offer me. Guzman told
me that if I could get into the house just like he told me to and get out, he’d
not press charges for me assaulting an agent for the United States government.”
She laughed
again.
“I knew the neighborhood and the house, you see, so I had a little
information about where he wanted me to go. I’d even gone there before going to
the police just to see where it was. But this time I had to get in and had to
get out. He wasn’t going to help me if I got caught, either, he said.”

Moving closer to her when she moved her
arm to her lap, he put his head close enough so that she could pet him from his
position on the floor. Dylan doubted that she realized what she was doing so
lost in thought, but he did. And it was all he could do not to purr loudly at
her. She continued with her story while she stroked his fur.

“The house was a large two-story that
had lots of windows and a great deal of landscaping around them. I’d broken
into houses before to find a place to sleep sometimes and had learned to be
careful. Dogs, wild ones, are very territorial and have no problem running you
from what they considered theirs. I’d spent plenty of nights on the cold ground
while a stupid mutt lay in a dry building. Also, I had to be careful of some
homeless people. They can be mean when you cross their path.”
Dylan had known
that she had lived a less than perfect life, but not this badly.
“Anyway, I
had dressed all in black and wore a mask over my face, and entered the yard to
the back of the property then got down on my belly to move in. I saw three men
in the yard and slid past them without any trouble. When I got to the house, I knew
there was a motion sensor light in the backyard, so I avoided it by going to
the front of the house.”
She paused in her petting and he waited. She
seemed to have gotten lost for a few seconds in a memory and it appeared to be
a good one from her smile. He waited for her to continue.

“They thought I’d come in from the rear for
whatever reason. But they were no less ready for me in the front, I suppose.
The light to the alarm system was off, but I figured that was a trick and
didn’t assume it was off, just the light had been disabled. I saw that there
was a small window in the basement, so I went there. It was small, but back
then as college student without money, so was I. Cutting through the screen to
the basement, I was able to drop to the floor about an hour before sunset so
the basement was dark and empty.

“The house was dead quiet, but I’d lived
in an older house like this one and knew that steps creaked and walls settled,
so I was able to tell footstep sounds above me as opposed to the ones the house
made. Going to the stairs, I nearly fell down them when I slipped on a pile of
dirty laundry sitting at the bottom of an opening. As I nearly tumbled, I hit
an opening above my head and grabbed on. It was the laundry chute. I found a
ladder and moved under it. As I stood up to stand in the opening, I heard
someone speaking softly on the other side, so I stilled for a few moments. It
was at my height to see into the bathroom, and I could see that the room was
empty of anyone. Climbing up the shaft was easy. There were slates there that
had been left behind when the thing had been the only way into the crawlspace
years ago, I was told. As soon as I was in the main part of the house, I went
to the kitchen
.”
She laughed as she continued.
“Someone had been having a snack and had left
it there for me to take. So I took the jar of peanut butter off the counter and
ate the sandwich. I wrote the person a thank-you note with the pen and paper on
the counter. Going back out was easy. As I went back to the laundry shaft, I
still hadn’t heard anything on this level, but there was someone on the stairs
either going up or down. I couldn’t tell. I crawled back down it, finished my
dinner, and was out the window again before the house exploded in light. They
caught me in the yard.”

When she didn’t finish, he thought how
disappointed she must have been. To have worked so hard to get into the house
and only to have failed when she came back out. He wondered if she ever
regretted taking the sandwich that more than likely had gotten her caught. But
he knew that she would find that to be her prize and smiled.

“So you failed. Christ, that must have
hurt after all that work.”
She smiled down at him and shook her head.
“They
didn’t arrest you, did they? I hope to Christ not. That would be so unfair of
them after telling you to break in.”

“I only had to get in the house and out.
I did that. The man I stole the sandwich from wasn’t all that happy with me,
but he did say he’d been impressed. He had only stepped out for less than a
minute, and when he’d returned, he knew that I’d gotten in somehow. He said if
not for that, I might have made it all the way back the way I came. He said
that the note was something that he’d keep for a very long time, and use it to
remind himself there was more than one way into a house and back out again. I
think he still has it in his office. He calls me occasionally when he wants to
talk about it.”

Dylan laughed. He couldn’t help it.
She’d out-smarted them all, and ate dinner, too. He wanted to ask her if she’d
gotten the job but realized that she had, sort of. She’d been recruited, but
not to where she’d thought she was going. He was sad for her about that and knew
that Caitlynne was working to get Jack onto her team.

He moved when she straightened. He heard
the heart start to beat slowly and knew that the vampire was waking. As he to the
position on the floor nearest the bed in the event she needed him, she sat in
the chair and didn’t move.

~~~

Lucius could smell the cat as soon as he
woke up. It had startled him for a few seconds, wondering how a cat had gotten
into his room. Then he remembered the boy he’d taken and settled down. He
waited before moving, knowing that the young panther would still be asleep. Stretching,
he moved so that his back was to the headboard and reached over and turned on
the light. He looked back toward the boy and nearly cried out when he saw the
woman sitting where he’d left his prey. She waved at him.

“Good evening, Lucius. I do hope you
slept well. Also, did you know that your heart doesn’t beat when you sleep? And
when the sun starts to go down, it starts working again? Slow at first, but it
picks up speed the lower the sun gets.” She shrugged. “Just an observation.”

He looked around the room and could see
that the panther was gone. When he looked back at her, he saw that there was a
gun in her hands, and he could smell the silver from where he sat. He started
to move but stopped when she cleared her throat and shook her head at him.

“Unless you want me to shoot you now
instead of later, I would suggest that you sit still. I’d like to ask you a few
questions.” She picked up a sheet of paper off her lap. “The first one is what
did you need Small for, and—”

“What are you doing here? You were not
invited here. I told you I’d meet you in front of your house. I demand that you
go there now and I shall meet you there.” He started to move again, and she
fired a bullet into the headboard not an inch from his head. “You nearly shot
me.”

“I know, damn it. If you hadn’t moved
when you did, I would have, too. Next time, if you wouldn’t mind not moving
around so much, I’ll see if I can get a clear shot.” He looked at her, stunned.
She was actually telling him how to behave so she could shoot him. He started
to rise again when she lifted the gun. He simply refused to deal with one such
as her.

“I would like for you to leave now.” He
heard what he was saying and had a hard time believing it himself. He didn’t really
expect her to leave, but maybe she was just stupid enough to do as he told her.
Apparently not.

“I have a question or two that I’d like
to ask you before we go. The first one is about the Manns, Sally and Karrie.
Where are they?” He looked at her, confused. “You called her husband Kirby
‘human’ she said. Or is that what you call all of us, ‘human’?”

“You’re all barely that to me. Cattle
are what I would label you. Just like all the other stupid, mindless animals
that do little more than wander around the field eating grass and other things.
On occasion, they give milk to supply you other mindless animal’s things like
cheese and milk, byproducts that make them fat and lazier. All of you should be
put into pens and fed once a day, then slaughtered when you serve your
purpose.”

“So from that I can assume you don’t
like us. Well, buddy, I don’t care much for you taking my family from me,
either. Do you even care that we were having a good time until you came along
and messed it up? I don’t shop often, but when I do, I like it to go smoothly.”
She picked up the paper again. “Okay now, where are the human’s Sally Mann and
her daughter Karrie Mann? By the way, bang up job on killing Kirby. I think
they’ll be picking pieces of him out of that room for years to come.” He nodded
at her compliment. He’d been angry at the human, but he had brought it all on
himself. He still thought of that machine he’d been messing with, but doubted
that it had been anything more than a toy to entertain him. But his good feeling
at what she’d said was short lived when she spoke again.

“Of course, he did send us all a
confession of everything you and he had been up to for all this time. The two
of you were very busy little beavers, weren’t you? I mean, the list is long and
very helpful. You had him by the balls, didn’t you?”

“I have no idea what you’re going on
about. I don’t know any Mann person any more than I know anyone else you’ve
spoken about. And I most assuredly don’t want anything more to do with you. Go
away.” Her laughter made him want to get up and slap her until her neck
snapped. But every time he moved she would point that gun at his chest, and he
knew she’d have him dead before he was able to get across the room.

A movement to his right had him moving farther
to the opposite side of the bed. A large panther, much bigger than any other
one he’d seen, was sitting there licking his paws. When the cat leapt up on the
bed, Lucius started to move. Then the girl cleared her throat. He was trapped
for now.

“Okay, we’re going to do this again.
Where are Sally and Karrie Mann, wife and daughter of Kirby Mann, the person
you killed in a hotel room several days ago?” Her voice had grown hard and no
longer full of humor. He knew she was getting mad at him, but he didn’t care. He
was going to kill her soon enough.

Lucius knew he had two choices, and
neither of them sounded like he would make it out in one piece. She wouldn’t be
able to kill him—of that he was fairly certain—but she would hurt him. One plan
was that he tried to materialize behind the girl, kill her, and deal with the
panther while he did so, or he could let her take him before the council. He
wasn’t thrilled with either of those ideas because he knew that he was wanted
for a great many crimes, more than the girl knew about, that would get him
killed by them. He watched her sit there as if she had not one care in the
world. Lucius made his move.

He was behind the girl before the cat
moved. When Lucius looked at the headboard where his head had been only seconds
before, he was glad that he’d been gone when the cat moved. The gouges left by
his massive paw tore into the wood at least three inches deep and a foot long. His
head would have been severed from his body in seconds had he been the slightest
bit slower.

Holding her head back with a handful of
her hair and a knife he’d taken from one of his victims at her throat, he
looked at her. He knew the cat wouldn’t move, not when he had her like this. He
smiled down at her, and she winked at him. He hated when she did that and
thought that she knew it. He shook her head hard.