The Bride Collector (11 page)

But here’s what’ll really tweak your gourd, Neo. You blithering idiot. This is rule two: In God’s infinite character he can
have more than one favorite without any of the others losing their status.

That’s right, Neo. You are the favorite one, the chosen one. But so am I.

And so is every living soul to walk this cursed earth.

And the rules are the same for all of them. Unfortunately, most are too insane to realize just how critical they are in the
game called life.

Until recently, Quinton had hated all humans because of their utter worthlessness. Then he’d learned that the exact opposite
was true. That to a man, woman, and child they were all infinitely valuable. This had caused him to immediately hate them
for being as important as him.

But now he no longer had to dwell on such mysteries. He had a role to play. He was God’s angel. A messiah sent to help those
whom God loved the most join him in eternal bliss.

Because every human was the most beautiful in God’s infinite capacity for affection, Quinton was allowed to select seven,
God’s holy number. He would deliver seven to God, a symbolic gesture of service for which he would be richly rewarded. At
the end of it all, he would be given the capacity to procreate again. His body, now at rest like a bear in hibernation, would
rise from a deep slumber and join with his own bride.

He’d lost one bride when she rejected him. He would right that wrong, and never allow it to happen again.

Quinton whistled as he drove the green Chevy out of the parking lot. His sense of sheer purpose and self-worth at the moment
was almost overwhelming. He was soaring. He waved at Mary, a single mother who lived two apartment buildings from his. He’d
helped her with her groceries once, wondering if she might be a suitable bride.

In the end, it all came down to the seventh one, the most beautiful of them all, and he knew her like he knew how to breathe.
But the first six, being the number of man, were his to choose at random. His to drain of all humanity so that God could accept
them as his brides.

Melissa, the beautiful young woman, was about to become a bride, the fifth choice. If she knew what Quinton knew, she might
also be giddy with joy and anticipation.

A part of Quinton knew that most flawed humans would find his reasoning slightly off. They might even think he was insane,
and he was okay with that. Humans had an extraordinary capacity for stupidity. They had once sworn that the earth was flat,
that the polar ice caps would soon be gone, that Quinton was ill in the head.

All were equally fallacious. Ignorant, childish, gullible, manipulated, foolish, STUPID, all caps.

Sometimes Quinton wondered at God’s capacity to love them all. His heart was indeed as big as the ocean. Were it left up to
Quinton, he would have taken a handgun with six billion rounds, neatly laid in the world’s largest clip, and laid them all
to rest, one by one.

The thought made his hands tremble on the steering wheel. He struggled to focus past a momentary blurring of his sight and
bring himself into submission.

It took him an hour to reach the blue house. He parked the pickup in a vacant lot at the end of a greenbelt behind the structure
and turned off the engine. Seven checks of his mirror assured him that he was alone, and at 1:00 AM he expected no less. He’d
spent a total of six hours behind the house, stepping behind each tree, around each bush, lying and scooting on his belly,
feeling the terrain, relishing the anticipation of this night.

No streetlights back here. No moon tonight.

Tempted to whistle but refraining from the indulgence, he placed the shower cap firmly over his head, pulled on the same boots
he’d worn during each taking, and slipped on fresh rubber gloves.

He stepped out of the truck and pressed the door closed with hardly more than a click. Locked it with his key. An overgrown
walking path wound between scattered trees, thin paltry apparitions that looked like they’d been planted by the developer
when the subdivision first opened. Houses hid behind the trees on either side; he could see their fences and darkened rear
porches.

He felt as one with all of nature at moments like this, as invisible as a midnight breeze and just as perfectly matched to
his mission. No mere mortal could see him there, floating through the darkness, and no insane human could possibly stop him.

Quinton stepped up the path quietly, keeping his senses finely tuned to his environment. Did any of the residents suspect
that a man had been walking behind their house for several weeks now, watching from the dark?

Likely not. They were favorites, yet they were stupid and entirely too trusting of their own flesh. Melissa’s house came into
view ahead, on his right, and a vast surge of satisfaction rose within him. He peered, exulting. Dark windows. She was sleeping
already.

An image of her heel with his bit pressed lightly into her callused skin spread goose bumps over his neck and shoulders. The
base of his spine tingled and his breathing quickened.

Bless me, bless me, bless me, bless me, bless me, bless me, bless me, Father.

He approached the edge of Melissa’s blue house, hardly more than a shadow on a moonless night. From the Google satellite,
the house was indiscernible. From God’s vantage point, it was nothing more than a speck, than a flake among a million flakes,
hardly distinguishable from a tree. Then—zooming in—a computer chip, then a postage stamp, and only finally a house. A black
car was driving past when the satellite had taken its last image.

No one peering down, no one except God, could possibly know what slept in the bed inside the tiny house. Just one in six billion,
but tonight the only one.

Selected by none other than himself, Quinton Gauld.

He stood still, like a small tree in the dark, and watched for a moment so long that any other person would have found the
stillness impossible to maintain. Finally, he unzipped his pants and urinated into a small plastic jar, which he then returned
to his pocket.

For a long time he stood and stared, rehearsing details, resuming his inward deliberations.

Brad Raines. Nikki. Nikki, Nikki, Nikki.

His mind shifted to the seventh.
You know, don’t you Brad? That I’m going to take her because she belongs to me, not to you? That she will come to me because
she is the seventh?

What the FBI agent couldn’t possibly know was that he was nothing more than a puppet on a string. He’d reacted to the note
precisely as intended. Smart, Quinton would give him that. Even brilliant. But Quinton depended on exactly that level of intelligence.

Brad would likely have to die to make eight, but this was a small sacrifice. One even the agent would willingly make, once
he understood just how beautiful she was.

Quinton set the thoughts aside and let his mind walk around the bed inside the house. He mentally placed himself mere inches
from his choice, so close now that his presence would be deemed by the world as an illegal intrusion, a trespass. A violation
brash enough to earn a scream from her, should she awaken early. Yet he belonged there, waiting in the dark, savoring the
bittersweet pause before her taking.

No longer willing to wait, Quinton decided that he would fetch the bride half an hour early. He retraced his steps to the
truck, set his plastic bottle of urine under the seat for disposal later, and withdrew the chloroform. Before she understood
what was at stake, she might be frightened by his appearance. He had to transport her safely to the place he’d chosen near
Elizabeth, where he could begin his work.

Ten minutes later, he stood at the edge of her back lawn. Not a sound of objection. No new pet, no sleepwalker or insomniac,
no barking neighbor dog. Perfect. He walked up to her bedroom window and peered in past the slats. Did Melissa realize there
was a thin gap between her mini-blinds and the window frame that allowed anyone to see a sliver of the room, including part
of her bed? Perhaps she had known and dismissed the concern, confident that she was special, immune to the outside world.

He made out long lumps in the half-light. It took a full minute for him to understand that he was seeing her legs under the
floral bedspread. She was home, as he knew she would be, but seeing her helped him relax.

Though Melissa used deadbolts and had an alarm system with adequate contacts on all windows and doors, cutting the glass on
the closet window, though time consuming, raised no alarm. He climbed in, careful not to dislodge the frame and activate one
of the contacts.

Using a small penlight to give him enough light to work by, he applied a few tacks of superglue to the edges of the cut glass
and replaced the pane. From the outside, no passersby would ever see it had been cut.

Now safely inside the favorite’s house, Quinton took a few minutes to calm himself. He breathed in the warmer air, redolent
with the unique smells of the fifth one’s daily existence. He smelled a savory fragrance wafting from the kitchen: some sort
of late-night take-out dinner. He smelled dust stirred up by a hidden ceiling fan, whirring in the dark. He even caught a
whiff of her perfume, its profile unforgotten since that first encounter weeks before.

At last, he stood, careful not to let his knees crack. He’d studied the house from every window and knew the layout well.
He was in the spare bedroom’s walk-in closet on the north side. A hall ran past the living room to the master bedroom, where
Melissa now dreamed of anything except the wondrous fate poised to engulf her.

He pulled the small bottle of chloroform and rag from his pocket, cracked the door, and then eased into the spare bedroom.
He’d measured the spaces and walked them on the bare ground a dozen times, so even now encased in pitch darkness he knew how
many steps to the door, how many down the hall, how many to her bed.

Quinton took them all on slow, padded feet. He waited a moment outside her bedroom door, then turned the knob.

No lock. Of course not. Melissa might be favored and stunning, but she was still quite stupid. Still, he loved her the way
God loved her.

Easing the door wide enough to accept his body, he slipped inside. A slight gray glow from the city outside worked past the
mini-blinds and offered a hint of light. Enough for Quinton to see her form, slowly rising and falling in peaceful slumber.

He was there now, in the place he’d obsessively fantasized about for the past several days. He let the vast smile within him
swallow up the infinite details of his success: the delicious proximity, the sense of power, the barely tolerated anticipation.

It always amazed him how unsuspecting they were. Asleep in their own dull comforts, unaware that there was a higher calling
to life. Like sheep wedged together in the pen. Six billion of them.

But he would go after the one.

Quinton doused the rag, returned the bottle to his pocket, and took two steps when the room erupted with light.

He pulled up sharply, stinky rag in his right hand. Melissa stared at him with round green eyes, hair tangled and flung over
her left cheek. Her hand was still on the lamp switch.

She wore a white mask of horror that seemed to have muted any scream. But Quinton knew her silence wouldn’t last. Now what?
He’d never found himself in this situation. She must have been awake all along.

“Sorry,” he said. “I think I’m in the wrong house.”

That gave her just enough pause to keep from crying out.

“Sorry. I must have stumbled into the wrong… Is this Twenty-four-thirteen?”

She swallowed and closed her mouth. But she was still too terrified to respond. Her eyes dropped to the rag in his hand.

“Okay, I’ll leave now,” he said, his voice suddenly weak and lame sounding. “I’m terribly sorry for barging in like this.
Talk about embarrassing. Though you are really quite a pretty woman.”

He chided himself for sneaking in the last comment.

“Wow, now I’m really embarrassed. If you can show me how to get out.” He looked over his shoulder at the door. Meanwhile,
the scent of chloroform wafted through the air. “Do you mind showing me how to get out of here?”

“Get out!” she cried.

He held up his hand. “No, no don’t do that. I’m sorry, I just…” Quinton pointed at her window. “Look!”

She looked. Childish, but it worked.

He dived then, while her eyes were momentarily averted. Coiled and then unleashed every muscle in his body, unswervingly aimed
at her. Latched on to her knee and threw his whole 210 pounds on her frail form, hand with rag extended.

But Melissa wasn’t a favorite for her looks alone. She rolled quick, squealing.

He rolled with her but she beat him to the far side of the bed and sprang to her feet. Her flannel pajamas were yellow with
small white butterflies. How cute was that?

Quinton threw up both hands. “No, don’t run. You’re the bride. He wants you, you have to…” But she was already running around
the bed, headed toward the open bedroom door.

He launched himself for her just as she bolted past the end of the bed. His hand caught a handful of her soft flannel pajama
bottoms and pulled her to a ripping stop as the seam split.

She pulled away, grunting, panicked. But now Quinton was on his feet, looming over her. He brought the rag down again and
stuffed it upon her mouth, to help her calm down and sleep so this wouldn’t be such a difficult adventure.

Melissa twisted away to her right and let a scream rip from her throat. But as soon as the cry began, it was abruptly cut
short by a loud
thunk
. Her attempt at escape had caused her to slam her head into the corner of her dresser.

The woman dropped like a dead deer. Immediately, blood sprang from a wound at her temple.

“No…” The sight of the blemish made his stomach swim. “What… What did you do?” He felt fury well up and flush his face with
heat. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Nausea swept over him as he stared down at the blemish on her otherwise spotless face. She’d ruined it! She’d slammed herself
into the dresser and marked her flawless visage. What was he to do now? For a moment, he thought he might actually throw up
on her. He pushed back the nausea only to struggle with a very strong urge to punch her in the face.