Swim Like Hell_A Visit to Superstition Bay by Benjamin LaMore

Author:Benjamin LaMore [LaMore, Benjamin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-06-23T22:00:00+00:00

Fourteen

“Jesus Christ, Ian,” Claire mutters darkly. “We can’t do it here. Isn’t this place still a crime scene?”

We’re standing outside the empty house where Azrael had killed two men and dribbled me like a basketball across the lawn. Bruce’s rental car is gone, certainly a resident of the SBPD impound. The police tape is still strung up along the front bushes and is completely sealing off what remains of the front door, but there are no gawkers or looters checking out the place. We are alone.

“Technically, yeah, but why not? We can use the back yard. The other houses here are vacant, and we’re far enough out so the rest of the town won’t notice.”

“Yeah, but isn’t it a tad… morbid?”

“Maybe, but it’s our best choice. We’re not all that far from the Crawl, but there’s nothing in this area that should draw attention from anyone looking for him.”

She crosses her arms defiantly. “I’m not going in that house,” she insists.

“Fine,” I huff. “Come on.”

Out of respect for the dead, and in deference to Claire’s stomach, we bypass the interior of the house completely and use the side gate to let us into the back yard. It’s low-cost but pleasant enough – nice, even sod, an unused flower bed, a wicker bench. She prowls the yard, giving it a thorough once over.

“Do you need a rock to perch on?” I ask, not entirely sarcastically.

“Actually, that would help.” There are no rocks, but there is a sizable stump of a felled oak tree that has never been pulled, and that’s what she settles down on. She puts an unopened bottle of water on the ground beneath her and sits, curling her long legs around the stump and scrutinizing the portrait Madeline had made for me.

“He’s a priest?”

“Former. Madeline said he left the church but didn’t explain why. I think I get it, though. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that something like the weapon of the Angel of Death would fall into the hands of a holy man and not some deviant.”

“Lot of good it did him,” she says, handing me back the picture. “Give me a little space, okay?”

I step back a few feet, settling in to watch the show. It’s worth watching.

She fills her lungs through her mouth, lets the air flow out through her nose, fills them back up again. Her eyes close, seemingly in concentration, but her lips purse ever so slightly and her head tilts back half an inch, extending the soft hollow of her throat. Her face relaxes, her nostrils flare, fingers gently clench the old soft wood of the stump. She has the look of someone enjoying pleasant memories of a past love, immersing herself in them. She lightly licks her lips. For all the world she looks like she was waiting to be kissed, expecting it, wanting it. Her skin flushes, eyes draw tighter, a small dew of perspiration beads on her flesh.

Then her lips part and she begins to sing.

I can’t name the tune.

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