The Sentry (2 page)

He looked at Tobey and Cleo. They were difficult to see in the flickery light, all blurry and smudged, but he could make them out well enough.

“Bet I could kill me a zombie, one on one, straight up, and I’d like to try. You think I could kill me a zombie?”

Neither Tobey nor Cleo answered.

“I ain’t shittin’, I could take me a zombie. Take me a vampire, too, only here we are and I gotta waste my time with this lame shit. I’d rather be huntin’ zombies.”

He pointed at Tolley.

“Hey, boy.”

Daniel returned to the bed and shook Tolley awake.

“You think I could take me a zombie, head up, one on one?”

The red eye rolled, and blood leaked from the shattered mouth. A mushy hiss escaped, so Daniel leaned closer. Sounded like the fucker was finally openin’ up.

“Say what?”

Tolley’s mouth worked as he tried to speak.

Daniel smiled encouragingly.

“You hear that wind? I was a bat, I’d spread my wings and ride that sumbitch for all she was worth. Where’d they go, boy? I know she tol’ ya. You tell me where they went so I can get outta here. Just say it. You’re almost there. Give me a hand, and I’m out your hair.”

Tolley’s lips worked, and Daniel knew he was about to give it, but then what little air he had left hissed out.

“You say west? They was headed west? Over to Texas?”

Tolley was dead.

Daniel stared at the body for a moment, then drew his gun and put five bullets into Tolliver James’s chest. Nasty explosions that anyone staying behind would have heard even with the lion wind. Daniel didn’t give a damn. If someone came running, Daniel figured to shoot them, too, but nobody came—no police, no neighbors, no nobody. Everyone with two squirts of brain juice was hunkered down tight, trying to survive.

Daniel reloaded, tucked away his gun, then took out the satellite phone. The cell stations were out all over the city, but the sat phone worked great. He checked the time, hit the speed dial, then waited for a link. It always took a few seconds.

In that time, he stood taller, straightened himself, and resumed his normal manner.

When the connection was made, Daniel reported.

“Tolliver James is dead. He didn’t provide anything useful.”

Daniel listened for a moment before responding.

“No, sir, they’re gone. That much is confirmed. James was a good bet, but I don’t believe she told him anything.”

He listened again, this time for quite a while.

“No, sir, that is not altogether true. There are three or four people here I’d still like to talk to, but the storm has turned this place to shit. They’ve almost certainly evacuated. I just don’t know. It will take me a while to locate them.”

More chatter from the other side, but then they were finished.

“Yes, sir, I understand. You get yours, I get mine. I won’t let you down.”

A last word from the master.

“Yes, sir. Thank you. I’ll keep you informed.”

Daniel shut the phone and put it away.

“Asshole.”

He returned to the window, and let the rain lash him. Everything was wet now: shirt, pants, shoes, hair, all the way down to his bones. He leaned out, better to see the Square. A fifty-five-gallon oil drum tumbled past the alley’s mouth, end over end, followed by a bicycle, swept along on its side, and then a shattered sheet of plywood flipping and soaring like a playing card tossed out like trash.

Daniel shouted into the wind as loud as he could.

“C’mon and get me, you fuckin’ zombies! Show your true and unnatural colors.”

Daniel threw back his head and howled. He barked like a dog, then howled again before turning back to the room to pack up his gear. Tobey and Cleo were gone.

Tolliver had hidden eight thousand dollars under the mattress, still vacupacked in plastic, which Daniel found when he first searched the room. Probably a gift from the girl. Daniel stashed the money in his bag, checked to make sure Tolliver had no pulse, then went to the little bathroom where he’d left Tolliver’s lady friend after he strangled her, nice and neat in the tub. A little black stream of ants had already found her, not even a day.

Cleo said, “Gotta get going, Daniel. Stop fuckin’ around.”

Tobey said, “Go where, a storm like this? Makes sense to stay.”

Daniel decided Tobey was right. Tobey was the smart one, and usually right, even if Daniel couldn’t always see him.

“Okay, I guess I should wait till the worst is over.”

Tobey said, “Wait.”

Cleo said, “Wait, wait.”

Like echoes fading away.

Daniel returned to the window. He leaned out into the rain again, watching the mouth of the alley in case a zombie rattled past.

“C’mon, goddamnit, lemme see one. One freaky-ass zombie is all I ask.”

If a zombie appeared, Daniel planned to jump out the window after it and rip its putrid, unnatural flesh to pieces with his teeth. He was, after all, a werewolf, which was why he was such a good hunter and killer. Werewolves feared nothing.

Daniel tipped back his head and howled to match the wind, then doused the candles and sat with the bodies, waiting for the storm to pass.

When it ended, Daniel would find their trail, and track them, and he would not quit until they were his. No matter how long it took or how far they ran. This was why the men down south used him for these jobs and paid him so well.

Werewolves caught their prey.

T
he wind did not wake him. It was the dream. He heard the buffeting wind before he opened his eyes, but the dream was what woke him on that dark early morning. A cat was his witness. Hunkered at the end of the bed, ears down, a low growl in its chest, a ragged black cat was staring at him when Elvis Cole opened his eyes. Its warrior face was angry, and, in that moment, Cole knew they had shared the nightmare.

Cole woke on the bed in his loft bathed in soft moonlight, feeling his A-frame shudder as the wind tried to push it from its perch high in the Hollywood Hills. A freak weather system in the Midwest was pulling fifty- to seventy-knot winds from the sea that had hammered Los Angeles for days.

Cole sat up, awake now and wanting to shake off the dream—an ugly nightmare that left him feeling unsettled and depressed. The cat’s ears stayed down. Cole held out his hand, but the cat poured off the bed like a pool of black ink.

Cole said, “Me, too.”

He checked the time. Habit. Three-twelve in the A.M. He reached toward the nightstand to check his gun—habit—but stopped himself when he realized what he was doing.

“C’mon, what’s the point?”

The gun was there because it was always there, sometimes needed but most times not. Living alone with only an angry cat for company, there seemed no reason to move it. Now, at three-twelve in the middle of a windtorched night, it was a reminder of what he had lost.

Cole realized he was trembling, and pushed out of bed. The dream scared him. Muzzle flash so bright it sparkled his eyes; the charcoal smell of smokeless powder; a glittery red mist that dappled his skin; shattered sunglasses that arced through the air—images so vivid they shocked him awake.

Now he shook as his body burned off the fear.

The back of Cole’s house was an A-shaped glass steeple, giving him a view of the canyon behind his house and a diamond-dust glimpse of the city beyond. Now, the canyon was blue with bright moonlight. The sleeping houses below were surrounded by blue-and-gray trees that shivered and danced in the St. Vitus wind. Cole wondered if someone down there had awakened like him. He wondered if they had suffered a similar nightmare—seeing their best friend shot to death in the dark.

Violence was part of him.

Elvis Cole did not want it, seek it, or enjoy it, but maybe these were only things he told himself in cold moments like now. The nature of his life had cost him the woman he loved and the little boy he had grown to love, and left him alone in this house with nothing but an angry cat for company and a pistol that did not need to be put away.

Now here was this dream that left his skin crawling—so real it felt like a premonition. He looked at the phone and told himself no—no, that’s silly, it’s stupid, it’s three in the morning.

Cole made the call.

One ring, and his call was answered. At three in the morning.

“Pike.”

“Hey, man.”

Cole didn’t know what to say after that, feeling so stupid.

“You good?”

Pike said, “Good. You?”

“Yeah. Sorry, man, it’s late.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Just a bad feeling is all.”

They lapsed into a silence Cole found embarrassing, but it was Pike who spoke first.

“You need me, I’m there.”

“It’s the wind. This wind is crazy.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Watch yourself.”

He told Pike he would call again soon, then put down the phone.

Cole felt no relief after the call. He told himself he should, but he didn’t. The dream should have faded, but it did not. Talking to Pike now made it feel even more real.

You need me, I’m there
.

How many times had Joe Pike placed himself in harm’s way to save him?

They had fought the good fight together, and won, and sometimes lost. They had shot people who had harmed or were doing harm, and been shot, and Joe Pike had saved Cole’s life more than a few times like an archangel from Heaven.

Yet here was the dream and the dream did not fade—

Muzzle flashes in a dingy room. A woman’s shadow cast on the wall. Dark glasses spinning into space. Joe Pike falling through a terrible red mist.

Cole crept downstairs through the dark house and stepped out onto his deck. Leaves and debris stung his face like sand on a windswept beach. Lights from the houses below glittered like fallen stars.

In low moments on nights like this when Elvis Cole thought of the woman and the boy, he told himself the violence in his life had cost him everything, but he knew that was not true. As lonely as he sometimes felt, he still had more to lose.

He could lose his best friend.

Or himself.

S
ix minutes before he saw the two men, Joe Pike stopped at a Mobil station for air. Pike sensed they were going to commit a crime the moment he saw them. Venice, California, ten thirty-five that morning, warm sunny day, not far from the sea. He had checked his tire pressure before heading to the gym, and found the right front tire three pounds low. If he had not needed air, he would not have seen the two men and gotten involved, but the tire was low. He stopped for the air.

Pike added the three pounds, then topped off his gas. While the pump ran, he inspected his red Jeep Cherokee for dings, scratches, and road tar, then checked the fluid levels.

Brake fluid—good.

Power steering—good.

Transmission—good.

Coolant—good.

The Jeep, though not a new vehicle, was spotless. Pike maintained it meticulously. Taking care of himself and his gear had been impressed upon a then-seventeen-year-old Pike by men he respected when he was a young Marine, and the lesson had served him well in his various occupations.

As Pike closed the hood, three women biked past on the opposite side of the street, fine legs churning, sleek backs arched over handlebars. Pike watched them pass, the women bringing his eye to two men walking in the opposite direction—
blink
—and Pike read them for trouble, two men in their twenties, necklaced with gang ink, walking with what Pike during his police officer days had called a down-low walk. Bangers were common in Venice, but these two weren’t relaxed like a couple of homies with nothing on their minds; they rolled with a stony, side-to-side swagger showing they were tensed up and tight, the one nearest the curb glancing into parked cars, which, Pike knew, suggested they were looking for something to steal.

Pike had spent three years as an LAPD patrol officer, where he learned how to read people pretty well. Then he had changed jobs, and worked in high-conflict, dangerous environments all over the world where he learned to read the subtle clues of body language and expression even better. His life had depended on it.

Now, Pike felt a tug of curiosity. If they had kept walking, Pike would have let it go, but they stopped outside a secondhand women’s clothing shop directly across the street. Pike was no longer a police officer. He did not cruise the streets looking for criminals and had other things to do, but everything about their posture and expressions triggered a dull red warning vibe. The women’s shop was an ideal place from which to snatch a purse.

Pike finished filling his tank, but did not get into his vehicle. A BMW pulled into the Mobil station behind Pike’s Jeep. The driver waited for a moment, then beeped her horn and called from her car.

“Are you going to move?”

Pike concentrated on the two men, squinting against the bright morning light even behind his dark glasses.

She tapped her horn again.

“Are you going to move or what? I need some gas.”

Pike stayed with the men.

“Jerk.”

She backed up and moved to another pump.

Pike watched the two men have a brief conversation, then continue past the clothing store to a sandwich shop. A hand-painted sign on the front window read:
Wilson’s TakeOut—po’boys & sandwiches.

The two men started to enter, but immediately backed away. A middle-aged woman carrying a white bag and a large purse came out. When she emerged, one of the men quickly turned to the street and the other brought his hand to his eyes, clearly trying to hide. The tell was so obvious the corner of Pike’s mouth twitched, which was as close to a smile as Pike ever came.