Blood Red

“Honey, for all you know she’d been hearing about everything he did and never reported him. Some people are like that.”

Ben shook his head again and rolled his eyes around until he could look in her face. “Why are you so nice to me?”

“Because you’re a nice guy, Ben.”

“No I’m not.”

“You just stop being a nutcase, okay?” She sighed. He really was a nice guy, but he was also a very drunk nice guy who was depressed as all hell.

“Tom is lucky. He knows that, right?”

“Let’s not talk about him, okay?” The last thing she wanted to think about was Monkey Boy. “Let’s get you back inside your place.”

Ben nodded and managed to stand on the first try. She’d expected him to fall on his ass. It still took almost five minutes to navigate into his apartment and move him toward his bedroom.

She helped him get his shoes and socks off. After that he was on his own. He didn’t try to get undressed.

As she was leaving he called out to her. “Maggie?”

“Yeah, Ben?”

“Thanks. Sorry to be a pain.”

“You’re not. Get some sleep. Feel better tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay. Good night.”

She let herself out and crossed the courtyard to her own place.

After she’d cleaned up and gotten comfortable, she lay back on her own bed and thought about Ben for a moment. He had a few homemade posters on his walls, and one of them looked very familiar. It was a poem by Byron; the same poem that she had pinned to the wall above her desk.

She drifted to sleep thinking about the poem and about the boy next door.

VII

The view from his new home was spectacular, but not good enough for what he needed to see, so Jason Soulis lifted into the air and rose until he could properly view the entire town of Black Stone Bay.

Their faith was like a beacon to him, a light that shone brightly even in the darkest hours of the morning. Through the centuries, he had seen many of the powerful auras on thousands of people.

These days it happened less and less. That suited him very well.

Inevitably, there were the ones who served their god with undying devotion and they were always a burden to him. Most times the truly devout served in a church, either in an official capacity or as a volunteer. They were the ones who could make his life uncomfortable. Through their piety, they served to protect the holy places from his influence and to protect their unwitting associates from his needs.

His eyes scanned the town, looking for the places of worship that had nearly blinded him when he first came into Black Stone Bay. There had been several places that were painful to see when he arrived. Most were barely noticeable anymore.

He smiled, looking to the buildings that had grown dark, pleased that his suspicions had been correct. It was not the building so much as those who attended to the structures that provided them shelter. Faith was a fleeting thing when laced with sin and guilt.

Every place that Maggie had visited had been tainted, not by the acts committed there but by the crisis of faith the acts had brought about.

Throughout Black Stone Bay people slept and, in some cases, worked. The proud were here in abundance, as were the wealthy and the vain. That was true in most towns. The difference was simply that the faithful were becoming an endangered species.

In the far distance a siren called out, an ambulance racing to save some fool driver who’d hit another vehicle and was now pinned in the metal that folded around his body on impact.

Slowly, very slowly, he descended back to the earth below and finally settled on the lawn of his home. He moved to the Cliff Walk, staring out at the ocean and the increasingly violent waves.

Somewhere below, deep beneath the waves, he could feel them as they moved about, growing stronger and more desperate. They were his now, to use as he saw fit, or to discard as they became redundant.

Soon they would be freed, but for now they suffered, lost in darkness and growing tired of their prison.

“Soon,” he promised them. “Soon, but not just yet. The way has not been cleared.”

Chapter 10

I

There were two abiding pains in Ben Kirby’s world when he woke up. The first was the throbbing, shrieking thing that had been his brain trying to crawl out of his head and find a place to die in peace. The second was the raw humiliation of having the girl he loved find him outside his apartment and help him inside.

The head he could do something about with a few hundred aspirin and a gallon or two of water; the heart was just something he had to endure. The only good news for him was that it was Sunday and he could sleep in for a while. Being a proper masochist, he made himself climb out of bed as soon as the sun’s rays tried to fry his eyeballs.