Predator and Prey Prowlers 3 (3 page)

An
Original
Publication of POCKET BOOKS

POCKET PULSE published by

Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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Copyright © 2001 by Christopher Golden

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

ISBN: 0-7434-2815-3

POCKET PULSE and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

For Amber

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks, as always, to Connie and my boys, to Lori Perkins, Lisa Clancy, Micol Ostow, Tom Sniegoski, and Rick Hautala. Special thanks to Pete Donaldson and Brian Gilbert.

P R O L O G U E

There were sharks in the water.

Not literal sharks, of course. Not literal water, either. It was more a sort of lesson on life, an observation Kenny Boone had heard a thousand times without ever really listening. Probably because he always figured he was one of the sharks.

But the truth was out today, friends and neighbors.

Kenny was a fish.

And there were sharks in the water.

It was a Wednesday night in the middle of August. The day had been hot as hell, but in the long afternoon shadows it started to cool off, and when night finally fell, it was almost livable. Enough so that South Street Seaport, tourist mecca on the tip of lower Manhattan Island, was swarming with people looking to let off some steam. A night like this in New York City brought out more than just the tourists. Locals left the office as early as they could to find a watering hole to cool down in, maybe head out with some friends.

That was the kind of night Kenny needed. But it isn’t what he got.

Three years he had spent in sales for Signature Software. In that time he put every other member of the sales team to shame, burned past them so fast their faces were charred. Kenny Boone had set the damn bar, raising corporate expectations for everyone else by exceeding his quotas by such huge margins every quarter.

A week ago the VP of sales had died of a heart attack. The job should have been Kenny’s for the taking, but the CEO had hired from outside, an old friend he’d worked with at another corporation a decade before.

First thing the new VP did was announce layoffs. Kenny Boone was the first to go.

All his life he had been convinced he was a shark. It hurt so much to discover he was wrong. Kenny had packed a box with his things and then, just before he got on the elevator, realized that the last thing he wanted to do was go home. Instead, he had asked Kayla Frigerio to let him store the stuff in her office until he could get back to pick it up, and then he hopped on the subway and headed down to South Street Seaport.

In his custom Italian suit, creases so sharp they could cut, he sat at an outdoor table at Moreno’s Bistro and ordered a beer even as he pulled out his cell phone. A little company was all he wanted. He had called Bart Tapply first, a friend from Signature. Then other friends and acquaintances in the city, coworkers and clients mostly, for he didn’t really know too many people away from the job.

Come meet me for a beer. I’m buying.

Everyone had something else to do. Everyone but Kenny. Or maybe it was just that they sensed he was wounded, that his ego was bleeding. And only a fool would go anywhere near blood in the water. Blood in the water would draw the sharks. They would sense his weakness, and he figured most people were smart enough to realize that if they hung around with him, they might look weak by association.

Assholes,
Kenny thought.

Hours passed and like a fool he kept trying. He had a nice dinner at Moreno’s, but he hated to eat alone. Did enough of that on business trips. So he had to rely on the beer to keep him company. By seven o’clock he knew from the look on the waiter’s face that he had worn out his welcome at Moreno’s so he started to wander the Seaport. There were other restaurants, other bars.

A couple of guys—Chaz Wexler and Rob Gonci—had said to call them back, that they’d try to meet him if he was still around later. So he made it a point to be around, knowing how much of a loser that made him, but not caring at this point. All he wanted was contact with someone who wasn’t interested in sharks and fish, someone who would laugh at a bad joke or shoot the breeze about the Mets with him.

The river slapped the wooden pilings that held up the pier. Sea gulls fluttered nearby, picking up scraps of everything from curly fries to cotton candy. A little after nine he finally decided to head home. With his now wrinkled jacket slung over his shoulder and his briefcase dangling from his other hand, he set off across the cobblestones. Having the cobblestones was good ’cause it kept the inline skaters and skateboarders off the main Seaport area and bad because he was considerably drunker now, and it made him sway even more than he normally would have.

But being drunk was not all bad. It blurred the world for him, and he needed that. People stared at him; a fortyish mother with two small children who had no business still being awake chided him aloud. Disgusting, she clearly thought he was. Kenny smiled at her, then flipped her the middle finger. Her husband began to move toward him angrily but the wife held him back.

Kenny laughed.

As he headed for the subway, his attention was drawn to music—sweet, heart-wrenching blues. Curious, his thinking fuzzy, he pushed through a constant flux of humanity to have a look at a cute brunette girl singing blues tunes older than her grandfather. It was incongruous, sure, but the girl sounded sweet and earnest and she was easy on the eyes, and so she drew even more people than the juggling clowns and fire swallowers and soapbox prophets.

“Been downhearted,” the girl sang, an old one Kenny remembered hearing on his father’s turntable back when people knew what vinyl records looked like. He’d been a kid then, and there was always someone there to pick him up if he fell down.

Not anymore.

Yet somehow, all of a sudden, as he stood and listened to the young girl playing the blues for whatever coins and dollars people would toss into her guitar case, he began to feel a little bit better. Kenny had been screwed, no question. And nobody had wanted to come down and join him for his personal pity party. Not that he could blame them. Most of them probably had real excuses anyway but even if they didn’t, who would choose to sit around and get all maudlin with him when he was in this sort of mood?

You’re drunk, you loser,
he told himself.
Stumble home, sleep it off, then start again.
After all, it was not like a headhunter would have a hard time finding him another position. It was just that he was so close to that VP spot he could almost taste it.

There’ll be another,
he thought. And as he watched the pretty girl with the painfully earnest face and the weary voice, it occurred to him that everybody sings the blues sometimes.

Kenny laughed softly to himself. The sentiment was true, but even in his head it sounded corny as hell.

Exhausted from his own self-pity, too drunk for his own good but just sober enough to get on the right subway train home, Kenny turned away from the blues girl and bumped through the crowd, using his briefcase to help clear a path. He had not gone five steps before his bleary gaze focused on a woman perhaps ten feet away. Under his breath—but probably a little louder than Kenny realized—he said, “Whoa.” She wasn’t the most beautiful woman he had ever seen but she was certainly the most striking. Her skin was the color of caramel and her hair was died a deep blood red. In a white, belly-baring tank top with spaghetti straps and a pair of dark blue jeans, she looked like a goddess.

Yet her appearance was not the most incredible thing about her. Kenny blinked a few times to clear his vision and gazed at her more closely. The girl stood there at the edge of the crowd listening to the blues, and no one went near her. She was not just alone, but the crowd seemed almost unconsciously to have given her a wide berth. For a moment he only stood and watched her, aware of how odd he must look with his jacket over his shoulder, briefcase at his side, swaying and staring. Aware of it, but not caring.

Then she looked at him. Kenny blinked and rocked back a bit as though her gaze were enough to knock him down. The woman smiled slightly and turned her attention back to the music. Kenny shook his head in amazement, took one more look around for a boyfriend or anyone else she might be with, but no, the girl was alone.

And that seemed like a sin to him.

Kenny ran a hand through his hair but didn’t bother with any other attempts to improve his appearance. He was drunk. There wasn’t a damn thing he could do to hide it. He just hoped it wasn’t obvious
how
drunk.

“Excuse me?” he said as he stepped up beside her.

Her eyes were orange. Kenny was speechless for a second. Then he realized they had to be contact lenses and he felt foolish. What was he supposed to say to a woman like this?

“Yes?” she asked, one eyebrow raised, as if she were amused by the interruption.

He wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

Kenny smiled, hoping he didn’t completely reek of beer. “Sorry. Not real good with the native tongue tonight. It’s just that I couldn’t let myself go home unless I talked to you first. I saw you standing here by yourself and, well, there’s something wrong with that picture. I thought I’d at least introduce myself, ask you if you wanted to go for a cup of coffee, and then you could tell me to go away.” With a toss of her bright red hair, she laughed throatily, almost nastily. Her teeth showed with that laugh and Kenny flinched when he saw her wide smile. There was something wrong with her teeth. Too many of them, too sharp, as though they’d been filed down to points. He blinked, glanced away a second as he shifted the briefcase from one hand to the other, draping his coat over it. When he looked back at her, he saw that it had only been in his mind. She had a beautiful smile.

“That’s how you think it will go, hmm?” she said.

“Pretty much,” he confessed, still troubled by the hallucination he had just had. He had no idea he was that drunk.

“Give it a try,” the girl said defiantly. She thrust her hands into the pockets of her jeans and regarded him curiously.

Self-conscious now, he hesitated. But there was nothing to lose here. At worst, he was killing a few more minutes before he went home to his apartment alone.

“Hi. I’m Kenny,” he said, sticking out his hand. “Kenny Boone.”

She shook his hand, and he was surprised at the strength in her grip. Her skin was hot to the touch.

“My name is Jasmine.”

Kenny swallowed nervously. “Would you like to go and get a . . . a cup of coffee or something, Jasmine?”

Again she smiled. Again, for just a moment, he had the sense that there was something wrong with her teeth.

“Sorry, Kenny. I’m waiting for someone. But thanks for asking.”

He fell apart inside, like his soul was made of glass and she had just shattered it. After the day he’d had, the last thing he needed was this arrogant, beautiful woman playing games with him. Kenny didn’t even have the energy to tell her off.

With a shake of his head, he turned to leave. “Thanks for nothing, you bitch,” he muttered.

Kenny bumped full on into a lanky guy who stared at him with eyes the color of polished brass. Contacts again. Had to be. The guy had blond hair, too long but it hung on him well, and a two-day stubble on his chin. There was something about him, not just his look but the way he carried himself, that reminded Kenny of a gunfighter.

A smile flickered across the guy’s face for just a second, and then he was all business. “You probably shouldn’t have said that,” the gunfighter said.

“Yeah?” Kenny replied, angry now, letting the beer do the work his brain ought to have been doing. Instinct told him to walk away but alcohol and pride wouldn’t let him.

“Yeah,” the guy said sadly. Then he glanced over Kenny’s shoulder at Jasmine. “We’re gonna have to go somewhere else to talk, aren’t we?”

“Hello, Dallas,” Jasmine said, greeting the man warmly. “It does look like we’ll have to relocate. You know how the cattle can be. Don’t want a stampede.”

Kenny was slow catching on, but now he got it. This was the guy she was waiting for. And now they were having this conversation around him, like he wasn’t even there. He thought again about fish and sharks, and for just a second he felt good about himself. As down and dirty as he had gotten to play the game of software sales over the years, he had never been as casually cruel as these two.

“Excuse me,” he said dismissively, trying to push past the guy she’d called Dallas.

“Too late for that, partner,” Dallas replied.

He grabbed Kenny by the arm, spun him around to face Jasmine and led him into the shadows. Kenny tried to pull away, but he could not. They were strong, these two. Jasmine slid up to him, taller than he was. Her arms went around him, and then her hands were on his throat.

She smiled as she broke his neck. Her orange eyes and her impossibly sharp teeth were the last things he saw as they let him slip slowly to the pavement to die.

Kenny’s eyes were open.

He stared up at the night sky; stars washed out by the lights of the Seaport and of Manhattan itself. Voices drifted to him. Someone called out in alarm. With a roll of his eyes he could see Jasmine and Dallas walking away from him, calmly speaking to each other as though nothing had happened, as though he had been forgotten.

Forgotten.

But not forgotten, because now there came more shouts of alarm. Someone nearly stumbled over him, a teenage girl. She glanced down at him and winced, then looked around for someone else to join her in her staring. Then there were others . . . so many others . . . voices shouting . . . staring eyes . . . heads bent over to study him . . . who did it? . . . how’d it happen . . . he was talking with some girl, where’d
she go?