“You should stay out of reach,” Stanley told Claudia.
She was standing, shivering and naked, behind her lantern-bearing acolyte.
“Don’t worry, Stan,” she said. “Hurting me is the last thing on his mind.”
Fargo giggled like an insane child.
Claudia Heart entered demurely, carrying a shallow wooden bowl in one hand and an ornamental dagger in the other. Stanley put down his kerosene lantern and pushed the heavy door shut.
“Hi, princess,” Winch said, rising to his knees.
She put down her knife and bowl. “Hello, Winch.”
“How’s the sunlight up there?”
“I could have you tied up and brought up top if you want, honey. You know it hurts me to see you down here so sick and cold.”
“No, no, don’t... don’t take me up there. I couldn’t take it, smellin’ your pussy on all them men.” Fargo stood up suddenly and violently. “Goddammit!”
Claudia rose with him, but not in fear. She drew close to his chest and stroked its long, skinny muscles.
“Shhh, baby. Don’t be like that. Come on, let’s sit. Come on. Yeah, honey. Don’t you think of anything but me right here with you.”
They both sank to their knees in an embrace.
“I want you, princess.”
“You know we’d both get sick if we did that, Winchy.”
“I don’t care. I want you. I need to have you.”
Claudia stroked his skinny, heaving chest and purred, “You will be the father of my children. You will.”
The moan that issued from Winch’s lips would have broken the hardest of hearts. But Claudia simply disengaged from the embrace and lifted her dagger.
“Put out your arm, Winch.”
“But it hurts,” he said, looking as coy as pure evil can.
“Put out your arm now.”
She etched the sixth cross on the underside of Winch’s left forearm. Then she held the bowl below the wound while he massaged out the blood.
“Six times on one side and six on the other,” Claudia chanted. “It’s our own alchemy, father. It is the blood of our children.”
When the bowl was a quarter filled, Claudia rose, saying, “It’s time,” and the door behind her groaned again.
When Winch looked up and saw that she was gone, he laughed loudly and for a long time.
While Claudia Heart and her Special Chosen had gone to the Jacobi mine, her remaining acolytes — men and women — stayed in the commune off Haight Street in San Francisco. They were waiting for Heart’s return, but she had already decided that she was never going back. Her servants had served their purpose; they had already gotten all of her that she would give.
Bonhomme, Barber, and Briggs interviewed many of the depressed followers but found no answers. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to help. They would have done anything to find their lost love. They would have turned her in to the police just to see her again.
Now Claudia lived in the former gold mine’s cafeteria with her dog, Max. Her Chosen, originally fifteen virile young men, and Bob Halston, lived in the bunkhouse.
In the cafeteria Claudia Heart cooked up the blood biscuits for her Chosen, only twelve after Winch Fargo’s slaughtering rage.
Claudia spent chaste days gauging her ovulation.
He’d come in wearing a long trench coat, taken off one of his human victims, to cover the blood. He staggered up the stairs and shoved the bloody clothes in the bottom drawer of the dresser. Then he lay back, near death from the harsh shine of Eileen Martel’s final moments.
“She was strong,” Gray Man thought. “The strongest of them all.”
Gray Man had killed all the hard ones. Now it was just the children, the strumpet, the other two women, and some things not human. One, probably a tree, a couple of hundred miles to the south, would wait for him. He’d track down the coyote and the dog last.
And then there was that other one. The one who had somehow gotten their light leaked into his veins. The one Gray Man had divined from Phyllis Yamauchi’s dying blood. The one Gray Man had hoped would give up his masters. Chance. But he was nothing, hardly worth the notice of Death; except that he had brought the girl.
“Alacrity,” Gray Man mouthed in his bed. “I’ve got a real treat for you, child.”
He lay back in Horace LaFontaine’s old room, weakened to the point of real death. Gray Man liked the feeling of being so close to expiration. He wanted to die. He was Death. He almost let the final shade come down on him. Almost let the light out of the box.
But there was the child, Alacrity. The passion he felt for her was beyond anything he’d known, beyond anything Horace LaFontaine had ever experienced. Her life beat so strongly, completely free from human frailty, and as powerful as the moment of death when the struggle is its greatest.
Gray Man wanted her.
But first he had to rest.
He closed his eyes and descended into the depths of death without dying. He sighed deeply and an instant later, when those eyes opened again, Gray Man was gone.
Horace looked around the room, feeling weaker than he could ever remember. Even when he had been dying of cancer, he could lift a finger, moan from the pain. But now all he could do was to look out and see the room he’d died in years before.
It’s like I’m a ghost, he thought. Like I ain’t even here, but I never left.
The sun went down while he lay there in darkness, remembering all the things that he’d done in his wasted life. Then he thought of all the things he hadn’t done. He’d never learned a thing on purpose, never helped a soul without helping himself. He’d never even done a single thing because it was the right thing to do. Even Death, old Gray Man, did what he thought was right. It was right, Death thought, to kill. He risked his own life to achieve his goals.
A knock came on the door.
A voice, probably the girl, Joclyn Kyle. Horace didn’t understand the words.
She must have gone, he thought, probably thinks I’m out prowling around like he does.
Horace tried to lift his arm but was still too weak. He could feel Gray Man’s presence way down in his mind. He knew how drained the devil was and hoped that Gray Man would die. Even his own death would be worth that.
Horace thought of the man he killed in prison. Prescott Jones, a Brooklyn fence. Horace’s best friend, Vinnie the Cat, had gotten the contract from his girlfriend. She told Vinnie and Vinnie told Horace that a man called Beldin Starr needed Prescott Jones silenced before his trial in June. Prescott was going to testify against Starr.
The deal was worth ten thousand dollars and the best lawyer in New York to get on Horace’s appeal, which was botched by the prosecutor but also ill represented by an uncaring public defender.
Horace was on the good-conduct program. He had a lot of places he could go in the prison with his mail wagon. He was in for armed robbery and assault, but he’d never got in trouble once they locked him up.
Prescott had a job in the lower kitchen. He washed the big pots and prepped vegetables and fruits, anything that needed cutting. Usually he had a partner, Willie Josephson, but Horace found out one day that Willie was sick, or pretending to be, and Prescott was alone.
The lower kitchen was a big room with a lot of waist-high counters piled with pots and bags of raw fruits and vegetables. All Horace had to do was to put his canvas cart in a broom closet, squat down in the rear corner, and wait.
Horace, lying there in the dark of his sister’s old house, remembered squatting down on that slimy wooden floor. He could almost smell the insecticide and detergent. The aluminum counters were cold against his arm and cheek. There was a round metal knife sharpener at his feet. The sharpening steel was maybe fifteen inches long and just thick enough. The perfect weapon to crack bone efficiently.