Last Angel Page 15

  A jumble of a million idiot things cluttering her mind, Ashley tensed, the muscles around her calves bunching painfully, readying themselves for a sudden cat-like lunge with the knife.

  “You know I didn’t want to hurt you,” Lamenzo’s lie was smooth, the salesman’s mask still in place. Almost believable.

  “Much,” Ashley hissed, springing forward and thrusting the blade’s point up, aiming for the bulge in his jeans. Lamenzo shrieked, one arm snaking out to parry the lunge, the other darting down and grabbing at a tangle of her hair. Both missed.

  The knife flew out of her sweating palm, skittering and spinning across the floor before coming to rest beyond the arched entrance into the passage. “Oh, God.” It was a whimper, indistinguishable from the ragged gasp of breath that birthed it. Shuffling desperately backwards, her knees scraping and sticking to the warm linoleum, her eyes never leaving his face, Ashley reached out blindly for another weapon; anything. Her back pressed up against the cold Formica of the drainer as it cut off her retreat. Without thinking, she pushed against it, used its unrelenting solidity to move painfully to her feet.

  He stepped slowly closer, rictus grin betraying his hunger, his need.

  On the drainer, Ashley’s trembling hand closed around the blue glass vase; the empty vase waiting for the dried flowers.

  “Oh, sweet Ashley. I said I didn’t want to hurt you… But look what you’ve made me go and do. You’ve made me kill you.” Lamenzo’s eyes seemed to glitter, sparkle, filled with tears of fresh-blown glass. “I really didn’t want to kill you, I really didn’t… but now I’m gonna rip your fuckin’ heart out, bitch!”

  She didn’t wait for him to come for her, she hurled the vase. It turned end over end, and smashed into his face, leaving the swell of a shattered nose as it broke.

  Shrieking, Lamenzo’s hands clasped over the bridge of his nose as he staggered back into the refrigerator door.

  “Strike three, motherfucker!” Ashley yelled, darting beneath his ineffectual swipe, “And you’re out!” The knife had spun away under the arch of the telephone stand, just far enough under that she had to stretch to reach it. Behind her Lamenzo wailed again. Her heart thudding like a derailing locomotive, Ashley groped for the knife, her fingers catching empty air.

  Then she had it.

  The Trinity Killer stood in the kitchen archway, glass eyes glazed and unfocussed; still obviously disorientated from the shock of the blow. Taking hold of the carver with both hands, Ashley lunged at him again.

  Too slow, he tried to grab a fistful of her hair, less adroitly than before but with more success. Laughing, Lamenzo yanked her head backwards; the motion jerking her body around so Ashley was forced to look up at him in a parody of supplication. Gazing into her frightened eyes, for this moment her God, her universe, her life in His hands, Lamenzo felt the knife’s wicked edge slice along his bare forearm, felt it peel back the dry layers of dead flesh and then it was burying itself fist deep between his legs, its tip severing the thickness of his femoral artery, twisting, gutting him. A sudden, shocking fire burned hatefully out from the gaping wound blazing up into his heart in a second.

  He staggered, legs giving way; not used to the pain, not used to the fragility of his borrowed human skin; fingers clasping and unclasping reflexively, losing their tangled grip on Ashley’s hair. Lamenzo’s body lurched away from the angel’s control; fell clumsily backwards into the archway as his hands closed around the carver’s wooden hilt.

  “Bitch,” he wailed. “You dumb fuckin’ bitch.” And toppled forward on to his knees, just inches from her face.

  For an eternity he hung there, suspended, his slate grey eyes bitter winter mist as they bore into her soul, tasted her flame, caught it, fed themselves. To Ashley, on the outside looking in, there were clouds suddenly in that winter sky, clouds that dulled the fire of the dead man’s life, claiming him once again for their own, and he fell the rest of the way to the floor, driving the knife deeper into his bloody genitals.

  The dead man released a last baleful lament before silence claimed him. The sound, as hateful as it was, seemed almost to be echoed inside her own head.

  Sobbing, Ashley crawled, crab-like away from Lamenzo’s body, pushing herself into a corner, shoulder blades pressed hard against the Formica drainer, back where it began and unable to take her eyes from the growing puddle of red leaking onto the linoleum tiles and the bloody bubble that had been made by her attacker’s dying breath.

  Above her, the kettle began to boil itself dry.

  Chapter Seventy-one

  Bill Stern, The Watcher, sat outside, in his car, doing what he did: watching.

  He sucked on the thick end of a Cuban cigar, breathing out fire. No smoke without fire, he told himself wryly as he looked up at the rows of blind windows. He had been forced to leave Father Joe back at the Paradise Motel, bound up in a few garbage sacks and smelling bad. Give the cleaner a surprise.

  Gaze resting on the fifth floor window again, it seemed fitting that this was what he had spent most of his life doing; watching. Waiting.

  The Jesus Demon was up there, he knew, and this time the watching was done; this was the hour of The Actor.

  Ducking down against the Coupe’s steering wheel, he reached under the driver’s seat, dirt stained fingers clawing out and hooking around the smooth surface of a half-empty bourbon bottle. Pulling it up, Stern twisted off the cap and swallowed a sharp, tangy mouthful. The liquor was lukewarm going down but its innate fire spread soothing warmth through his stomach. Twisting the cap back on, he kicked the bottle back under the seat and looked back up at the window again, still putting off the moment.

  Still no sign, no outward giveaway that the Jesus Demon was working its evil magic inside the apartment block.

  He leaned across to the passenger seat, lifting one of the sharpened stakes out of the open tool bag and rolling it between his hands. The bag, his work bag, contained the few essentials he’d needed to get this far; the saws, the stakes, a claw hammer, a six-inch hunting knife with serrated edge, Geronimo, his garrotte, and an album of collated cuttings from newspapers and police files dating back over three long years. Evidence to prove his madness, if indeed he was losing his mind.

  Chapter Seventy-two

  Daniel Mannelli slammed the handset down into its cradle, grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair and ran through the detective squad room ignoring the stares that greeted him. For all the joking, he knew better than to question Gabriel’s feelings.

  “Delgado, Lambert, Kolchak,” he shouted, naming the first faces he saw. “Grab your coats. We’ve got him. The Reisinger Building on Prospect.”

  He didn’t wait to see if they were following. Took the stairs three risers at a time, hand sliding down the rail. The sound of his footsteps echoed hollowly in the concrete trap of the stairwell. Coming into the Muster Room at a run Mannelli slammed into an unhappy prostitute waiting to be led away. Rouged lips twisted in an ugly smear as she kissed her middle finger in his face.

  “Where’s the fire, Mannelli?” The desk sergeant called from his lofty perch. Of late happiness wasn’t a condition Mannelli had been particularly familiar with, but for all that familiarity the twist of anguish he felt as he spoke was surprisingly acute:

  “Put out a call for backup, we’ve got him. The Reisinger Building on Prospect.” The look on his face was enough to have the desk sergeant picking up his radio mike and sending out the call without asking who.

  His Three Musketeers, Delgado, Ross Lambert and Dale Kolchak ran straight through the Muster Room, Lambert still shrugging into his leather jacket as he ran. Mannelli followed them out through the glass double doors and into the street. The first snowflakes were falling, wrapping the air in white. A fairy tale Christmas in New York.

  The worn leather soles of Mannelli’s shoes slipped on the damp stone.

  Chapter Seventy-three

  She listened for familiar sounds within the nightmare:

  The radio, t
he bubble of the kettle, the hum of the refrigerator, sounds that could wrap her in a cocoon of normality, sounds that could breath and life back into the real world.

  Sounds that denied the Salesman of God lying dead on her floor.

  She felt sickness climbing in her throat, felt the bitter tang of it clawing to be free. Ashley closed her eyes but instead of blackness and escape there was a death called Lamenzo dancing where there should have been darkness and safety. She opened her eyes again, knowing what was waiting for her when she did, but still sickened by the spreading circle of blood.

  She began to move, needed to.

  Tremors chased along the muscles of her arms as Ashley crawled oh so slowly past the body of her would-be killer. The warmth of his blood making gloves for her hands as they walked through his death. And in that elastic moment she found herself vomiting, putting her hands up to her face and screaming as the blood sank in. She couldn’t move for the longest time and even when she could it was a slow, torturous struggle that took her face to within inches of his. She, the Moon and him the Earth, her orbit brought their lips into a lover’s proximity, hovered as if addicted to the gravity his body imposed on hers.

  Then she was in the passageway, past Lamenzo’s body, and the spell such as it was, was broken. She felt wetness between her legs, spreading through her sweatpants, a dark wet stain around the join of her legs and down her thighs. “Oh, fuck…”

  The phone was on a stand just inside the hall and mercifully out of sight of Lamenzo’s corpse. Pressing her back against the wall Ashley lifted the telephone into her lap. She didn’t know who to call, she knew Gabe had friends on the force, she could see a line-up of faces, but no names.

  She sniffed. She had started to cry without realising it.

  Outside she heard the sound of a car door slamming and young people laughing as they walked up the street towards the river.

  “Pull yourself together, girl. You’re tough. You’re a survivor.” But she didn’t feel tough and she didn’t feel like a survivor. She felt like the victim of a hit and run. She felt like road kill.

  Shivering, she plucked at the sweatpants where they clung to her thigh. The hallway, her hallway inside her home, suddenly felt cold and unfriendly.

  She pressed out the numbers 911. The first bleat had scarcely sounded when a calm voice said: “Emergency Services. Which service do you require?”

  “Help me,” she said, barely a whisper. Drawing her knees up to her chest she slipped into a kind of comfortable cradle and began rocking slightly, the phone still held to her mouth but her mouth unable to form the words she so desperately wanted to say as the shock settled in and began suffocating her.

  “Are you still there, Miss?”

  She tried to say yes. Nodded.

  “Is there someone in the apartment with you?”

  Again she tried to say yes; something came out but it wasn’t a word.

  “Listen to me. Stay calm, if you can get out of the building, get out. Do not put yourself in danger. Understand.”

  “His… his body… body’s in the kitchen.” she said finding the truth inside her somehow, giving voice to it. “I think he’s dead… I think… I think I killed him.”

  From downstairs she heard the sound of the main door swinging closed and the security lock latching into place, followed by the slow measured sound of footsteps coming up the stairs.

  “Okay, sit tight. Don’t touch a thing. Don’t move a thing until we get an officer on the scene. Can you confirm One Eleven Prospect Parkway and I will dispatch paramedics and officer backup?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your name?”

  “Oh God, I think I killed him.”

  “Your name please, Miss?”

  “Ashley. Ashley Powell.”

  “Okay, Miss Powell, there are officers on their way. Don’t let anyone into or out of the building before they arrive.”

  “All right,” she said, but the operator had already hung up.

  She put the phone down and stood, looking around as if she were in some stranger’s house, as if everything around her belonged to someone else, some other woman who lived the kind of life that had room for pools of blood and dead bodies in the kitchen.

  “Gabe,” she said, needing to talk to him, to hear his voice say everything was going to be all right. Starting to shake again she looked at the small black bottle of Sandman sandwiched between the three bottles of malt and rye on the bookcase. She thought about going back into the kitchen for a glass but there was his body on the floor and all that blood. So much blood. No, she decided, no glass.

  She unscrewed the cap and raised the bottle to her lips.

  As she swallowed the short hairs on the nape of her neck bristled beneath the electricity of instinct’s caress. She felt him in her throat even as she looked around frantically for the knife she’d left in the kitchen, left imbedded in him.

  Behind her, a wet, shuffling sound like dragging feet, and then something else, another sound. Raw. Wet. Meat being torn. Brittle cracks. Bones being pulled back on themselves and broken.

  “Just answer me this one question, bitch. Do you want to live?”

  Turning her head, too late to run, she saw too much. The Angel within Lamenzo’s body was shedding its borrowed skin, peeling back the dead flesh. Opening its secret anatomy with claws, touching the corruption of the child killer’s corpse, parting the clotted muscle and slowly bleeding death onto the carpet as, layer by layer, the angel peeled away a miracle. A cage of white bone beneath the flesh, and then like some grotesque butterfly the angel began the screaming agony of its rebirth, coming out from the skin, breaking the white cage bone by bone, taking Lamenzo off just as easily he would a suit of light. It stepped out of the corpse, leaving the carapace of skin and bone in a bloody wet puddle around its ankles. A sheen of blood clung with lover’s intimacy to the angel’s true form, blood that ran a wash of red through its hating eyes.

  Ashley backed up a step, already dead without the motors of her heart and lungs realising the redundancy of beating.

  The angel stepped forward a step, reaching out, a curious almost childlike gesture as if it needed help taking its first few faltering steps. It was drawing agonized gasps, as if being born again had truly hurt it. Then it was moving with more certainty; a purpose. Claws that should have been fingers pushed into her, gripped her, and pulled her close so that the sting of the angel’s over sweet breath brought tears to her eyes.

  “Do you want to live?”

  She thought of Gabriel then, in that fraction of a second as a sharp stabbing pain flowered in her kidneys. The Angel’s claws opened her skin, parted the striated layers of muscle and tendon in search of the ultimate prize; her heart. And then her legs were folding, balance betrayed by the intimacy of death.

  “Do you want to live?” It asked again, tasting her delicious fear. Tasting the bitter tang of hope in her heart, the fluttering of love for the Amerind. He waited out her screams, waiting for the answer he knew memories and love would bring to his ears. Of course she wanted to live.

  Her screams faded as her face kissed the softness of the carpet. She pushed her hands beneath her, struggled to rise but weakness, cool like the elixir of nevermore, flowed through her veins and she slumped back to the floor… the carpet smelled stale, of burned out cigarettes and blood.

  “Yes,” she said, or tried to say as the life leaked out of her, I want to live. I want to live… Sorry, Gabriel, I’m so sorry… I’m so sorry…

  Chapter Seventy-four

  Halfway up the second flight of stairs he heard the woman’s screams and knew he was too late.

  The faint blush of a breeze tasting him felt weary with the knowledge of death, its condition contagious.

  Bill Stern cursed himself for a fool and took the last six steps three at a time. Any sixth sense he might have felt owed was conspicuously absent. Heart hammering, he paused to catch his breath and let his eyes accommodate the murk, his gradually sharpen
ing gaze scanning the grim interior.

  The door to her apartment hung open, twisted back grotesquely against its shattered hinges. It made him think of the cheap funfair thrill rides of his teens.

  With every new step he took, his hopes fell another notch.

  The slaughterhouse stench was overpowering. The wooden stake in his hand felt heavy, reluctant. His mouth was dry and the comforting taste of bourbon was gone. He wanted to slip back downstairs and put his hand back under the driver’s seat again. That want, and the charnel house reek, made him feel like a trespasser in a mausoleum, a tomb raider and body thief.

  “Don’t be a fool,” he hissed, pushing through the twisted splinters of wood and into Ashley Powell’s apartment. Stake in one hand, claw hammer in the other. Ready.

  Standing just beyond the threshold Stern noticed three things almost instantly. First, the reinforcement of the smell; the air laced with the ferrous taint of blood. Second, the stains, red streaks like elongated footprints dragged between the kitchen and the lounge. Third, the noise. Coming from inside the lounge. Someone struggling to rise, knocking something over as their hand flailed out. A grunt, half male, half female, neither sexless nor yet any single sex, the grunt becoming a scream, becoming a woman’s scream…

  He forced himself into taking another step. Four more to the door. He licked his lips. The hand clutching the stake was visibly shaking, the knuckles near-white with the pressure. Still the wood felt slippery in his grip.

  One step…

  Stern eased himself forward, praying silently to whatever God would listen.

  Two…

  The smell was stronger now, still sickeningly fresh. The stains on the carpet would take some shifting. He nearly laughed out loud at the stupidity of that thought.