In the meantime, he went to his trophy wall, studying the pictures, enjoying them. All the different candid shots, taken without their knowledge, as they went about their day.
Each individual board told the mundane story of a life.
Walking. Shopping. Getting the mail. Going to church. Pausing on the sidewalk to speak to a friend. Walking a dog. Kissing a husband. Working in a garden.
"This is your life," he murmured, and chuckled.
Such ordinary, sad little lives they led.
Until he transformed them, of course.
First Becky. Then Karen. Then Shirley. All taken from their bland lives and transformed.
He knew they weren't really Audrey.
He wasn't crazy, after all.
They came into his hands someone else, someone boring and uninteresting. Someone the world would have failed to notice if not for his work. Nobodies.
He made them Somebody.
He made them Audrey.
Standing before the first board, he reached out and touched one of the two central images, an eight-by-ten he had taken himself, the record of all his preparations.
Becky as Audrey. Naked on his worktable, her dark hair glossy, her brown eyes staring into the camera's lens, because he had turned her head just so before taking the picture.
Brown eyes filled with terror.
He savored that, the power swelling within him, his body stirring, hardening. He unzipped his pants and freed himself but kept his gaze on the photos.
The other central image was the final shot of Becky as Audrey, when he had finished his work. He touched that lightly, his index finger slowly stroking the image of her, all laid open on his table, her breasts and sex removed and her torso slit from throat to crotch, the cold fluorescent lights above making her exposed organs glisten.
Her eyes were closed for the final shot.
He always closed them for that, because while he enjoyed dying eyes, dead eyes bothered him.
Haunted him-or would, if he let them. But he didn't believe in ghosts. Didn't believe in an afterlife. That's why he worked so hard to make this life fit him, because every moment, every second, had to count.
He stroked the picture a moment longer, feeling himself hardening even more, then moved to the second of his trophy boards.
Karen as Audrey. Same pose, same terrified brown eyes staring into the camera's lens.
And the same growing sense of power inside himself, the feeling that he could do anything, bend anyone to his will.
Anyone.
The knowledge, the certainty of his own invincibility caught at his breath with its strength. He was so hard he ached but exercised his self-control by touching only the record of his work, not himself.
He touched each of the two central photos, stroked them, savored them. The throbbing of his power spread throughout his body, pounded in his ears, and he could hear his breath coming fast now, not quite panting. His vision began to blur, but he forced himself to move on to the third board.
Shirley as Audrey.
Hers was the most complete transformation yet, and he spent long moments stroking the images, remembering every action, every detail of the process.
"Almost perfect," he whispered.
He took a step back but then leaned forward and braced his hands on either side of the board, his gaze fixed on the central photos, refusing to touch himself. His rigid legs were trembling, and his hips wanted, needed, to thrust, to pound, but he forced himself to remain utterly still. His eyes completely lost focus, his breath rasped, but he was otherwise silent as the memories of Shirley/Audrey's final moments made his hard flesh throb and twitch and finally empty itself in spasms of pleasure.
Teeth gritted, he rode out the waves of release without making a sound. Not because he had to, but because he could.
He was Power, and he could do anything.
The Prophecy said so.
Dani-
"Dani, are you ready to-" Marc broke off, staring at her with a frown. "What is it?"
She pushed herself up from her seat at the conference table. "Nothing. My mind must have wandered. Did Paris and Jordan report back in?"
"Yeah." He was still frowning. "So far they've managed to quietly talk to two of Karen Norville's fellow tellers from the bank. Only one says she remembers actually seeing a man with a camera last summer, maybe taking pictures of Karen, but she doesn't remember what he looked like. Paris said both women are worried that they didn't take what they thought they knew seriously, that they didn't report it to someone. Guilt, of course. Jordan said it was pretty obvious they were afraid Karen's dead."
Absently, Dani said, "Smart to interview them at home rather than at the bank. But you know the news is bound to break by Monday, don't you? I mean, break publicly in a big way."
He nodded. "We've been damn lucky, but with every Venture citizen we talk to, we knock a few minutes off the clock."
"We can only do what we can do. So where's Hollis? Aren't we off to see the reverend?"
"She's in the bullpen talking to one of my deputies who has in-laws in the congregation of the church. We figured a little inside information couldn't hurt. Dani, what is it you've been trying very hard not to tell me all day?"
Paris was right; he read her all too easily.
"It's probably just my imagination."
"The voice? His voice?"
"It's an exaggeration to call it a voice, at least now. A faint echo of a whisper."
"Because you're able to shut him out?"
"I wish I could say yes." Dani shrugged. "But I've only been taught the bare bones of shielding, and since I never needed it, I haven't really practiced. No, I don't think it's anything I'm doing."
"Which is bothering you more than anything else."
"Well, yeah. I should be able to shut out psychic contact from someone else. If that's what this is. Dammit, I just don't-"
Marc put his hands on her shoulders. "Dani. Why do you keep trying to carry all this alone? You aren't Cassandra, but if there's a war coming, you sure as hell can't stop it alone. Let us help. Let me help."
She stared up at him, very aware of his hands, aware of the connection with him that she had tried her best to block ever since that other voice had pushed its way in. Because she didn't want Marc to sense or feel that, not that cold, implacable, evil voice, not in her-even if it wasn't her.
Especially if it wasn't her.
Instinctively, she tried to close off a bit more of herself. "You are helping. One step out of this building, and I'm practically surrounded by your deputies."
"That's an exaggeration. And not what I meant, as you damn well know." He sounded frustrated, and his frown deepened.
"The best thing you can do for me," she said deliberately, "is to keep looking for this killer. And Reverend Butler is a possible lead, right? So let's go. If that was thunder I just heard, we may be in for a storm."
She hoped she was speaking literally and hoped it would only be the weather that would turn violent.
His fingers tightened, and for at least a minute, Dani wasn't sure if he was going to let this drop-for now, anyway. But finally he released her, and said in a match of the even, deliberate tone she had used, "You of all people should know that none of us can get through this life alone. When you're ready, I'm here, Dani. I always have been."
He released her shoulders and turned away. Dani followed him from the conference room, wishing she didn't feel so strongly that she had just made an awful mistake.
The Reverend Jedidiah Butler was an imposing man, at least in his own mind. To the rest of the world outside his admiring congregation, he was rather average in size and build, could have been any age between forty and sixty, and possessed as his single distinguishing feature a shock of silver hair.
He didn't even boast the sort of booming voice common among Southern preachers, but instead spoke to Marc in the slightly nasal tone of someone with bad allergies.