That’s what he intended to do tonight.
He walked past the case to a wall of Chinese throwing stars, stilettos, hunting and Bowie knives and switchblades.
Mark picked a couple off the wall and hefted them, trying to decide if he wanted to have a back-pocket backup plan.
He chose one with a dark wooden handle that was carved to conform to the fingers of the hand. The knife blade tucked into the handle for easy hiding in one’s back pocket. Mark nodded. He’d been a Boy Scout. It was a good idea to “be prepared”.
Selena was idly thumbing through DVDs in a rack nearby. Mark walked to the counter and pointed at the squarish gun. “How much for that one?”
The thin man eased off his seat with a small grunt and stepped to the case. “The Ruger?” he said.
Mark noticed the word was emblazoned on the handle. He nodded.
“Depends on how fast you want it,” he said.
“I need it tonight,” Mark said.
“Uh huh.” The man nodded, as if that was a common request. “You know we have gun laws in this state?”
Mark nodded.
“Let me see some ID.” The man held his hand out as Mark pulled a driver’s license from his wallet. The man took it and held it up to the fluorescent light on the ceiling. He raised an eyebrow as he handed it back. “Looks like a real one. You a cop or something?”
“If I was a cop would I hand you a real license?”
“Maybe. Lift your shirt.”
It was Mark’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Why?”
“Looking for wires.”
Mark guessed at the logic for that. He lifted the T-shirt up and turned around, giving the man a good look at his chest and back.
“Flash me.”
“You’re serious.”
The man nodded.
Mark looked at the door. The parking lot remained empty. He undid his belt buckle and lowered his jeans a foot, then pulled them up fast.
“Her too,” the man said.
Mark turned towards Selena, who walked up to the counter. She’d been listening. “You didn’t tell me we’d be strip-searched,” she said.
“I didn’t think we would be.”
“Hmmm. I could say no.” She smiled thinly.
“And I could say get out of my store,” the man behind the counter said. “No difference to me. Except I’m missing my show here. So if you’re gonna finish this business…”
Selena nodded. She was still in the outfit Mark had given her before dinner, without undergarments. She lifted the U of I T-shirt to expose her breasts and held it there a moment before turning and letting the block I slip back down over her chest. Then she pulled the string on the sweatpants and let them fall to the floor.
“No strings attached,” she said quietly. “Or wires. How much do you think this is worth on the secondhand market?”
The man didn’t even attempt to keep his tongue in his mouth.
“Brick shit…”
“How much for the gun tonight?” Mark interrupted. “Cash and carry.”
The man struggled to bring his eyes back from Selena as she tied her pants back up. He reached into the case and turned the gun over. “Normally it’s $250, and there’s some paperwork and a week or so wait. But I can do this for you. Come back and finish the paperwork tomorrow. You take the gun tonight for $650. You need ammunition? That’s extra.”
Mark nodded. He knew the guy never expected him to come back the next day.
“You know how to load it?”
Mark shook his head.
Ten minutes and $750 later, Mark and Selena emerged from the store with the gun, a knife and a crash course in handling it.
The dashboard read 10:44.
“Okay,” Mark said. “What are we going to do for six hours?” They’d agreed that he wouldn’t try to enter the club until after 4:00 a.m., to make their escape as close to dawn as possible.
Selena put one creamy hand on his arm and drew it towards her stomach. Mark smiled, and she slipped his hand under her T-shirt, leading his fingers up beneath the cotton to cup her left breast. “I can think of something,” she said.
“I thought you were an angel,” he said. “Angels don’t have sex, do they?”
She leaned over the gearshift and kissed him. Her mouth was warm and hungry. When she drew back, a thin line of spit still connecting them for a heartbeat, she whispered.
“I’ve fallen,” she said.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Waking Up to the Night
The faces were leering again. As Rae blinked to clear the fog from her eyes she watched them. It felt as if she’d been asleep for days and focusing on the faces helped her struggle to wake up. At first glance, they seemed like just faint, ghostly etchings on the dark ceiling, but when you stared at them a moment or two, you began to see the faint movements as they frowned, blinked, smiled slowly. It was as if they were in slow motion; they didn’t change much, but they did change.
She focused on a woman’s face in the center of the crowd, just above her bed. The woman’s face was long, the lines of her face visible even in the dim light. “Who are you?” Rae whispered. “Who were you?”
The woman opened her mouth, as if to speak. But Rae couldn’t hear anything. The woman blinked and then shook her head. It looked as if she was crying. She shook her head again and mouthed one syllable. It looked like…no.
Rae brought her arm up to scratch her head and the memory of everything going wrong last night came back to her in a rush. She brought her arm back down and touched her stomach, afraid of what she’d find.
The skin was smooth beneath her fingers. She brought it up to her chest and felt the place where Mark had stabbed her when he’d escaped.
No gaping wound, no blood, no scabs. She still wasn’t used to this sleep-and-heal thing. But thank…er, not God…for it. The devil? The Night Mother?
Rae eased herself up on her elbows and pulled the sheets aside. The sheets themselves were covered in dark stains, but they slid off her body to reveal skin that was whole and healed. The scars, however, remained. Her belly now bore the knife-written tattoo of the snake. She remembered the latticework of scars that Amelia’s body had been and wondered how long it would take before she looked the same.
“You’ll never look the same as her,” Kharon said, answering her thoughts again. He stepped into the bedroom from the outer living room. “Amelia tried, but she didn’t have what it takes to cross into The Black. And so she gathered her scars, but never passed on. After tonight…you will be transformed. I will take you to the doorway, and then Yvonna will be your guide.”
“But, what about Mark?” Rae asked. “How can I do it without him?”
“You don’t need him. You’ve never needed him. He was a convenient crutch. But I have someone else in mind for you to use for the danake.”
“Who?” she asked.
“In good time,” he answered.
“When I enter The Black, will I see you again? I don’t want to lose you.”
“Yvonna will decide,” he said. “My place is here.”
“Who is Yvonna?” Rae asked. “Why haven’t I seen her here before?”
“She is the Night Mother,” Kharon said. His voice was quieter as he answered. “She lives in the dark and has many places to visit. She only comes when one is ready to enter The Black, as you are.”
“Did she take you to The Black?” Rae asked.
Kharon shook his head. “I was born in The Black. All of the Watchers were.”
Rae looked at Kharon’s corpse-white body, at the way his bones shone through his skin, at the way his face leered, skull-like. He wasn’t human then. But rather, some kind of devil…or fallen angel.