Collapse (standard:fantasy, 6807 words)
Author: mctoke	Added: Apr 11 2001	Views/Reads: 3540/2065	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Jillian Kelly is a normal with normal friends - until one of them is killed. There are strong elements of horror and weirdness in this tale of love and hate.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

everything is going to turn out alright." 

"Jonathon is indoors?" 

"Yes, go right in," Donovan said. "He's expecting you." 

She looked in self-pity as he drove away in the big Jaguar. The windows
in the gleaming car were rolled right up; there was no shortage of 
air-conditioning there. 

Two hours later she did not care about the air in her car. She was
halfway through a big margarita, and the spot she was sitting – under a 
huge oak tree – had most of the heat washed away by a steady breeze. 

“You should get a new car, dear,” Jonathon’s voice was stereotypical for
a gay man. He talked that way about half the time. As a millionaire, it 
didn’t really matter how he talked. He had invented some bit of 
communications software, and had retired at the age of thirty. 

Jillian had known him for five years, since she was 18. She had wanted
to be his girlfriend, before she had known he was gay. 

He did not have a big house, but it was a nice one, and it had the added
advantage of being right on Mountain Island Lake. Jillian was tempted 
to get her fishing rod – she had it over here, after all. But the 
thought of not catching any fish was too great. 

She settled back in her chair, and eyed Jonathon evilly until he
relented and refilled her glass from the pitcher. “It’s your turn to 
make these next,” he said, this time speaking in his normal business 
voice and waving the pitcher of marguerites at her. Everyone had two 
faces. Jonathon had told her that, and she had to admit that he was 
right. But his were further apart than most, perhaps. Far from being 
openly gay, he took pains to hide it from the people in the industry he 
had worked for, and still did design work for. 

Only his closest friends knew that he was gay, and Jillian counted
herself among the lucky few. What a waste, she thought to herself as 
she watched him walking away from her. Jonathon was an Adonis, perfect 
in body and shape. 

Jillian sighed, and took a long sip of her drink. She was lusting after
gay men. No matter how nice they might happen to look, that was 
desperate. 

“I know I should get a new car, Jonathon,” she finally said testily.
“But my credit sucks. You know that, too." She took another sip, and 
then said in an obvious subject shift, "What was your dad doing here?" 

“Tut, tut, my dear, you underestimate the great Jonathon. I happen to
know a certain car lot that has working for them a friend in the credit 
department. Oh, dear, I do think he is actually the credit manager. 
Whatever salesman you get, tell them to make sure Justin handles the 
credit.” 

He shoved a card at her. She nodded, still irritated, and pushed the
card into her pocket. 

"As for the estimable Mr. Donovan. Good god, I've known the man for
years and still can't call him by his first name." 

"What is his first name?" 

"Percy." Jonathon pointed at her suddenly. "Don't even think about it!"
he roared at the sudden mischievous grin on her face. "Anyway, he was 
discussing some business we have going. That man can make money like 
nothing flat, dear. He's the reason I have all this. He could sell snow 
to an Eskimo." 

Jonathon settled down in his chair, and for long minutes there was the
sound of nothing but the water and the birds, the soft sough of the 
wind in the limbs of the reaching trees. Across the lake, a small boat 
surged onto the water, it's little engine yowling in a most pleasant 
manner. Above them, in the darkening sky, lines were drawn in glowing 
counterpoint to the vanishing sun. Rippling waves of folded glory 
spread across the sky, sun trapped in waves of thin clouds. 

Friday night. For all but an unlucky few it was an international
phenomena, a time to enjoy life itself. That was the greatest thing to 
come of all the technological advances – the ability to have the time 
and not have to worry about what you did with it. That was what made it 
all worthwhile. 

Or so Jillian thought, as she got quietly, moderately splashed and
talked all manner of things with Jonathon. They spoke of the state of 
the government, and played Go, a stones game, and phantom hearts, a 
game Jonathon had thought up. And at some time she went to sleep on the 
screened in porch, stretched to her full five six on the huge couch 
there. The wind and the moon kept her company and her dreams roamed the 
night, led by the siren of the softly splashing water fifty feet away. 

She was not awake when the Curtain opened inside the house. Jonathon was
not either, and unfortunately for him he was directly in the path of 
the Curtain. His body was severed from the right hip to the left side 
of the neck, cut as cleanly as with a giant blade. The only sound he 
made in his passing was a bubbling sigh that filled the room but 
traveled no further. 

The Hand stared down at the man’s body, a small smile curving his thin
lips. His hair was worn in a long ponytail, the features of his face 
thin and esthetic. He allowed the gate to shut, and then bent down and 
looked closer at the dead man’s neck. 

A flash of anger traveled through the Hand. He had been hunting his
quarry for a long time now, had traveled across more worlds than he 
cared to remember. In fact, of all the people he had tracked down for 
the Hated this one had proven the most resourceful. 

But the man he hunted was not the dead man. The dead man wore the
necklace, that was to be sure, but there was no way this was the quarry 
– there was no way this was DuVolde. The Hand knelt, and examined the 
heavy necklace about the dead man’s neck. It was a sigil, of the House 
Doneal – DuVolde was a direct son of that house. He should never have 
taken the necklace off, not by the honor of his family. The Hand was 
repulsed at the action. 

The Hand was frowning. He slipped through the house, as silent as the
shadows that reined there, death in an attractive mask and a black suit 
of a somewhat strange cut. 

He moved, a liquid shadow in the dark. He was ostensibly searching for
Duvolde, but he knew he would not find him there that night. In an 
outdoor room he found another, and looked down at this one. It was a 
woman. He could tell from the smell of her, and the indistinct shape of 
her body beneath the cover. Definitely female, and his sharp eyes told 
him that she would be found attractive by any standards. 

He wondered how long it had been since he had engaged in the game of
sex, but could not. The memory and the desire for sex had faded along 
with the memories of who he actually was. The woman stirred, and he 
made a small adjustment somewhere in her mind. She stirred again, 
curled up, and slipped deeper into sleep. 

Hand smiled again. He would leave this one alive while he searched for
DuVolde. He was sure the man was somewhere on this world – somewhere 
close. It should be short work to find him now. Without the necklace, 
DuVolde would not be able to leave this place. If he had not tried to 
leave yet, he would not even know he was trapped. The necklaces had 
been a present from the Emperor to the Nicenti, the Family Doneal. Now 
DuVolde was the last of the Nicenti, the last of the Doneals. 

He turned and left the woman as she lay there on the porch – she did not
stir as he searched the rest of the house, and she did not stir when he 
left by the front door. 

She did not stir until she was awakened by a pounding on that same door.
Confusion reined as she stumbled through the house, and Jillian 
recognized Stewart’s voice before she was halfway to the door. 

“Dammit, Jonathon,” Stewart was saying. “Wake up! I can’t believe you
missed the appointment this morning!” As Jillian opened the door she 
looked blearily at her watch. Stewart shrugged by her as she blinked at 
the watch again. It said 11:00 exactly. How had she slept so late? 

“What did you two do last night?” Stewart demanded, staring at her with
narrowed eyes. He was nearly as good looking as Jonathon, but so vain 
his beauty was useless. “Jonathon was supposed to meet me at the 
lawyers office for the closing today. He said it was the only day he 
could make it, so I rearranged my whole schedule!” 

“Calm down, Stewart,” she said, but his back was towards her already as
he walked towards Jonathon’s bedroom. Stewart had been one of 
Jonathon’s mistakes, a former lover of the kind that you cannot get rid 
of. Stewart hung about like flies at a picnic, unwilling to leave 
completely. Jonathon put up the intrusions for some reason, but Stewart 
was a professional at backing off when Jonathon began to find him an 
annoyance he could do without forever. 

Jillian looked after him with a weary expression on her face. She did
not envy Jonathon. What a way to wake up. 

Then she heard the sudden screams. They did not sound human – that was
what got her; that was what sent the first shiver of fear along her 
slim arms. 

She ran to the master bedroom, and it was Stewart that was screaming,
his fingernails digging into the smooth flesh of his cheeks, drawing 
gashes that leaked blood. He paused for just a second, and then 
screamed again, and turned and ran. He knocked Jillian over, staring at 
her with frantic eyes. His skin was blotchy and pale as he bolted from 
the house. 

Jillian got up, and looked into the room. 

She would have screamed too. She knew she would, she knew she should
have. But it was as though by seeing Stewart totally panicked she 
somehow kept her own equilibrium. She still did not know how. 

Jonathon lay on the bed, eyes wide open and staring directly at the
door; directly at her. Jillian shook her head. Those dead eyes staring 
into her soul . . . 

There was blood everywhere. The bed was an abattoir, the two far walls
covered by splashes of the stuff. 

Jillian stared at the mess, trying not to vomit. Jonathon’s body had
been cut in two, severed so cleanly the parts of the body had rolled 
away from each other. The insides had spilled out onto the mattress. 

Jillian blinked rapidly, turned and shut the door behind her. 

She went to the phone, and called 911. The operator said the police had
already been dispatched. 

Evans pursed his lips as the med guys left the bedroom. He had been
second on the scene, and as always the rest had waited on him to open 
up the murder scene. He had made that fact plain to anybody he had ever 
worked with, to the extent that his reputation now preceded him. The 
detective did not look like much; a middle aged balding man with a 
growing paunch, but his reputation in other areas was just as deserved. 
That to cross Evans was to invite an avalanche on yourself. 

He looked across the room at Novak. The younger detective was talking to
the woman, but he nodded as he caught Evans gaze and broke away from 
her. “Man, she’s a hotty,” he whispered as he approached. 

Evans pursed his lips and nodded. She was that, there was no question. 

But he had known good-looking murderers before. “What do you think?” 

Novak looked at Evans for a moment, and then his gaze slid to the
doorway. It was open now, and photographers were gingerly stepping 
around the room, trying to disturb the blood on the floor as little as 
possible as they shot the walls. 

“I don’t know what to think,” he finally said. “How could someone sleep
through that? The guy had to scream – the doc said he was cut while he 
was still alive. Unless someone drugged them both. She says she didn’t 
wake up until this Stewart guy knocked on the door.” 

“Do you believe her?” Evans asked. He was not sure which way Novak would
go, but it was his job to find out, his job to make sure the kid was 
trained right even though they weren’t really partners. God, that was a 
thought. He hoped they weren’t partners, but the Captain did strange 
things every now and then, and saddling him with this Novak kid would 
be one on him. 

Novak paused for a long minute, looking at the bit of blood spattered
walls and then cutting his gaze to the girl on the couch. “No, I don’t 
think she did it. But I’m not sure about the fact that she slept 
through everything either.” 

“Why don’t you think she did it?” 

“To big a cut,” Novak answered immediately. “I can’t imagine what type
of blade had to be used, but it would take a lot of strength. It looks 
more like an industrial accident, but a lot cleaner than any I’ve ever 
seen. There’s no way a woman could have made that cut, unless she did 
it with some type of machinery. And that’s going a little to far.” 

Good, Evans thought, he had actually thought things through instead of
just going by his gut. Evans had learned a long time ago it was easy to 
pay to much attention to your gut, especially when there was a 
beautiful woman involved. “What about the footprints?” 

“What footprints?” Novak asked. He looked into the muddy brown eyes of
the bald, paunchy little man in front of him. Eyes muddy in color, but 
sharp as a razor when they needed to be, as they were now. 

“There were none!” he said finally, and strode to the room. The
photographer was wearing plastic booties. There was no way to walk 
across the room to the bed without leaving some footprints in the 
pooling blood. 

But he had seen for himself – Evans had not let the scene proceed until
he had gotten there - he had seen for himself that before anyone 
entered there had been no footprints in the blood. Not a single one. 

How could he have overlooked anything so obvious? 

Evans was smiling at him, one side of the man’s thin mouth drawn up, the
brown eyes sharp now and full of humor. “It seems we will be looking 
for a magician, Mr. Novak,” he said softly. “I fear it will be a hard 
chase. We will let our little bird fly for now, but I want someone on 
her tail. If she does not know anything, then she may be in danger. 
Either way, I believe she should be watched. Don’t you?” 

Novak thought Evans was a bit weird, and the older man talked like a
quack. But he had to admit Evans was right about the girl being 
watched. 

And he was just the man to do it. 

Jillian hugged herself, and waited for the two detectives to tell her
she could go. She had seen them looking at her, and had not liked the 
look in their eyes. She didn’t think they thought she was guilty, but 
that look said they would use her if they had to. 

She purposely ignored the man walking out of Jonathon’s room. He was
stuffing small plastic booties covered with blood into an evidence bag. 
The man had a tired, lined face. He looked as though he had seen to 
many dead bodies, to many faces frozen in fear, in expectation of pain 
that had passed hours ago. Jillian felt a sudden empathy for this gray 
faced, plain man – he photographed dead people for a living. That could 
not be good for the spirit, and it was reflected in his pale eyes. 

He nodded at her, and walked on out of the house. There were more people
lined up at the door now, there to gather the physical evidence if 
there was any. 

“There’s always physical evidence,” the bald detective had said. He had
nice eyes, and they were the exact opposite of the photographers. They 
were merry eyes, and danced with light even in the dimness of the 
house. “A lot of times it doesn’t do us any good when we find it. But 
when the field of suspects has been narrowed? That is when the physical 
evidence pays off. It is then that it will point the incriminating 
finger to the guilty party.” 

Jillian did not think it was going to be as easy as the detective said
it was. She did not think so at all. She was still fuzzy headed; still 
felt as though she had been drugged, but not like that also. Something 
that had been done to her, she could just not figure out what it was. 
She would never have slept that late, and her head felt stuffed full of 
wool. She would have believed that was shock, but she had felt that way 
when she answered the door, before she knew Jonathon was dead. 

No, this would not be easy, Jillian thought to herself. 

As he approached her, she saw something in his eyes that told her he was
no longer so sure either. “You are free to go, Ms. Kelly. As I’m sure 
you’ve heard in the movies, don’t leave town until we have some time to 
sort this out. Did the medic take blood?” 

She nodded, and pointed at the inside of her left elbow. Evans flashed a
brief smile. “That’s it then, Ms. Kelly. Try to remember anything that 
might do us some good, please.” 

“I will, I promise,” Jillian said, but all she could think of was
Jonathon’s body, cut horribly and his eyes staring blankly into hers. 
It was no wonder Stewart had screamed, and then tried to blame the 
murder on her. She was just thankful this sharp-eyed detective had not 
believed her guilty just by presence. 

Jillian Kelly opened the front door to Jonathon's house, as she had done
thousands of times, and looked out onto the quiet street. 'The last 
time' Jillian thought. The last time she would ever have this view. 

She blinked, and stared as a small man suddenly stepped out of the
woods. Jillian squinted as the man became a long limbed, lean dog, 
perhaps a wolf hybrid. Jillian blinked, and watched the dog turn and 
disappear into the sparse woods. 

She stared after the wolf, dog, whatever it was for a long minute, a
minute that seemed an hour. She could not disbelieve her eyes; she 
could not deny what she had just seen. She could not deny that there 
was a policeman standing less than ten feet from the dog, a policeman 
who simply glanced at the mutt, noted the collar, and shooed the thing 
away. 

Had she seen the little man? Had she seen anything like that, or was she
hallucinating from whatever drug had been given to her? 

Jillian stumbled out to her car, sat down in it holding her keys in her
hand. She had no idea how long she sat there. 

There was a tapping on the glass, and she rolled the window down to look
into the eyes of the younger detective. His name was Novak she thought 
disjointedly to herself. His eyes were a startling green, as deep as 
the Caribbean Sea. 

Novak started to open his mouth to say something. The woman looked as
though she were on the verge of talking, so he paused. She continued to 
look at him for a long moment, her eyes opened wide and slowly turning 
liquid. Novak realized she was not looking at him, she was staring at 
something on the far turn of the horizon – he just happened to be in 
the way. 

Her lips worked, and her jaw flexed – and a single tear broke from her
eye to trickle down her cheek. Novak stared as Jillian’s fine boned, 
elfin face seemed to shudder. Another tear slipped down her cheek, and 
she continued to stare through him, her mouth working. 

Novak stopped thinking like a cop, stopped thinking like an adversary.
Instead, he thought like a man, and as men have done for countless ages 
he reached out to comfort the crying woman. That she was beautiful did 
not hurt any, but to his credit Novak would have done so no matter what 
Jillian may have looked like. 

There was a ripping sound as the first sob was torn from her chest.
Novak was leaned into the car  - he had opened the door somehow, and 
Jillian let him gather her to him. She cried out again, and only barely 
realized it was herself making that strange keening noise. 

Finally, she shifted slightly and sat away from Novak. He let her go
with a final pat to the shoulder. “Why don’t you let me drive you home. 
You are in no condition to drive. Evans can follow us.” 

Jillian pursed her lips. Despite the fact that she had just cried on
this man’s shoulder she still could not bring herself to trust him. But 
he was right. She was in no condition to drive. 

So she just nodded, and said OK. 

The Hand stalked through the night. It had been three days since it had
come to this strange world. Hand had never seen so many different types 
of machines. These people seemed to be obsessed with machines of every 
sort, that would do anything a person could imagine. 

The Hand turned as it heard a person approaching. It was one of the
street people the Hand had recruited. There was another with him. “I 
told you to come alone,” the Hand growled, but he looked with interest 
at the scum’s companion. 

Unlike the street person, whose eyes were weak and watery, this new man
had eyes almost as black as the night, eyes that were at once cautious 
and supremely confident. 

Conrad was the street person’s name, Hand thought to himself, and a
second later that one spoke. “Look, I know you said come alone,” Conrad 
whined. “But you got to meet this guy. He knows a lot of . . . uh, 
anyway, he can find people real good, he can find ‘em the best of 
anybody.” 

“Griss,” the black eyed stranger said. His weird eyes burned into the
Hands, and for the first time in a long time, Hand found himself 
discomfited. He could not get a reading on this Griss man. He looked 
the fellow over from head to toe. Dressed in middle of the line 
clothes, dark and of a baggy cut. The man was short, and had thick 
black hair and a beard that was shorn close but so thick no trace of 
skin could be seen beneath it. The skin that was visible was shockingly 
pale, almost white. 

Hand looked at Griss’ feet, and stopped a startled sound before it could
start. He had thought Griss had been wearing shoes, but he saw in 
another swift glance that it was not shoes on the man’s feet, but 
tightly woven hair. 

The Hand hated mutants, and Griss was undoubtedly one. This world would
not stop amazing him. Unfortunately, he hated to be amazed. 

“Is what Conrad says true?” Hand asked, his voice hissing in his
dislike. It was easy to see in his hawklike features. Griss repulsed 
him, but Griss was used to doing that with people. He knew he did not 
look like other people, and he had paid the price for the fault of his 
birth almost since that ignominious day. 

Griss found, though, as he stared into Hands eyes that there was a
certain acceptance. Hand may hate and loathe him, but that would not 
matter. “Conrad does not lie,” Griss spoke. His voice sounded exactly 
like it ought to sound, like a shelf of rock sliding into the ocean 
depths. “I am the best at what I do, but I do not work cheap. Nor do my 
associates.” 

Hand stared at the mutant. Did the thing even realize it was not wholly
human? Well, neither was the Hand, truth to tell. He had been born 
human, but had been irrevocably altered since that day. That was enough 
distinction for the Hand, enough for him to hate any mutant that could 
pass as anything close to human. 

Hate was irrelevant to his job though, and irrelevant to the way he
treated those who worked for him. He did not abandon his servants 
because of hatred – he did not abandon them for anything. If they 
displeased him enough, he might kill them. But he would never desert 
them. 

Perhaps it was that that Griss saw in the Hands’ eyes. It could have
been. He knew only that he made a contract. He would be paid well, and 
his people better. And there would be more work in the future, if he 
was lucky. 

Griss couldn’t wait. 

There can be no synopsis of the modern soul, any more than there can be
of souls gone by in ages past. The modern poets, if one searches for 
them, are just as influencing as the ancient, the modern musicians just 
as worthy of the praise of ages. And either of those, despite their 
best efforts, will still fall short of describing the glory and pain of 
life. 

Right now Jillian Kelly did not feel either inspired or great, and it
was that innocence of the power of her own words that made them that 
much more powerful. It would be some time yet before she realized just 
how powerful the words she wrote really were, but that is another 
story. 

She still felt as though her head was stuffed with wool – something that
made it impossible for her to think, or to sleep for more than fifteen 
minutes, or to even sit still for one single minute! The urge to scream 
sat upon her, insistent and clamorous in waves, and then barely present 
- but never disappearing completely. 

She hated death with a passion as venomous as anything on earth. Oddly,
as much as she hated the velvet stranger she had no desire to learn how 
to defeat it. Unlike most people that realize death is their enemy 
early on, she did not even attempt to become a doctor or a nurse. 
Instead, she wrote bad poems about the Pale Rider, and put them to 
worse tunes on her old guitar. 

“Shit,” she said, and went and got a beer. 

The thing was, Jonathon had hated sad songs. She would just have to
write a nice perky, happy song about death. She had a sudden vision of 
him; standing on his dock, perfect body dripping water as his head was 
thrown backwards, as laughter rippled across the waves of the lake. 

The look of his eyes in the sun, a brown so light it was hard to imagine
now that she could not see them anymore. Hard to imagine, and harder to 
hold onto the memory. Photographs never showed the true color of 
Jonathon's eyes, she realized, and she would never see that color again 
as long as she lived. She would never hear his laugh, as big as life 
itself, booming outward like an explosion or see the white slice of his 
smile in the tanned, handsome face. 

The next morning she was nursing another beer, watching the TV with dull
eyes when she saw a commercial for the car lot that Jonathon’s friend 
worked at. “What is his name?” she demanded of the TV, and found the 
small card. Justin, that was undoubtedly it. The card was thick and 
creamy, the paper embossed with a raised picture of some sort. Jillian 
traced the edges with her finger, but could not tell what it was other 
than that it reminded her of an old Latin letter or rune. The car lot 
was perhaps twenty minutes from where she lived. 

She sat on the couch for an hour, rubbing the card with her thumb. 

Screw it, she thought. She needed a new car anyway. Jonathon himself had
told her that. 

The salesman she talked to was an older man with an impressive mane of
white hair and friendly blue eyes. She liked his approach – he talked 
to her like a regular person and did not in any way push. And when they 
were ready to, she said in a soft voice, “I would really appreciate it 
if you could get Justin to handle the financing.” 

Ron looked at her with his blue eyes, the smile on his face appearing
strained for just one second. Then it was back full force, perhaps a 
bit bigger now, a bit too . . . full of joy, full of something. “Of 
course,” he finally said, realizing she was waiting on him to speak. 
“Of course, I’ll see what I can do.” 

Jillian smiled up at him brilliantly and sipped her coffee as the man
walked away. She had to admit to herself, she was excited about getting 
a new car. She felt guilty for that excitement. She felt guilty about 
that excitement. Her friend was dead, and she was about to meet the man 
she was convinced had been Jonathon’s last lover, and all she could 
think about was how nice the leather seats had felt. 

Jillian Kelly is a lot of things. She was almost always sensitive to
undercurrents of emotion and tension that other people seemed to miss, 
but that day she had no inkling that her life would change for the 
second time. 

She smiled as the door to the small office opened and the handsomest man
she had ever seen came into the room. 

Corman Roth had been a wino for years – almost seventeen now, as far as
he could remember. He never stayed in one place long; he did not like 
that at all. He always seemed to have just enough money for a bottle of 
burgundy or a bus ticket to the next town, and that had been enough for 
him for the longest time. 

He had been a rich man, and for his present circumstances still was
rich. His wife and children were gone now though. He was sure They had 
gotten his family. They were everywhere – that was why he had to keep 
moving. If he rested for to long They would be sure to find him, and 
then the game would be up. He wondered how they hid in this town. Was 
it as a part of a government agency, or conveniently tucked away inside 
some huge corporation? 

They were out there, that was all he knew – black helicopters and
Chinese troops waiting to ravage him waiting to ravage America. 

Corman stumbled out of the alleyway. No one would find the body for
days, and by that time Corman meant to be gone. He hated killing the 
soldiers of Them, but he loved it too. It was the one thing that made 
his miserable life worthwhile. Since his family had disappeared he had 
killed dozens of their soldiers, all dressed as winos and bums like 
himself. Dozens scattered across the nation. He killed them where he 
could find them, and trusted that inner voice that told him who was 
expendable. 

He cut through a barren lot, the buildings already falling down and
scheduled to be torn down; parking lots already roped off and heaped 
with rubble. Work had been started here once, perhaps a year ago from 
the faded look of the signs, and stopped just as suddenly. 

At the front of the third building he saw a long, sleek Mercedes
four-door sedan. He looked at the car. It looked as out of place here 
as it would on the moon. There was no reference in the torn tarmac and 
ruined buildings that supported the sight of the gleaming Mercedes, 
nothing in blocks that would draw a person that drove such a car out 
here, especially in the fading sun of the afternoon. He listened, and 
thought he heard something from the building closest to the gleaming 
Mercedes. 

He stepped to the door of that building, and then into the hall. Corman
heard voices coming from further into the building, and he crept on in, 
turned a corner. Whole sections of the building were missing here, but 
the ground floor was fairly navigatable. 

Corman rounded a corner. A shaft of sunlight streamed through a huge
hole forty feet up in the air, and a bird's wings flapped in the dusty 
air. The scene was painfully beautiful. 

There was a woman standing with her back to him, and if he was any judge
of women she was gorgeous. Her legs were long and slender, and her 
skirt was tight in all the right places. 

“Let her go!” Her voice was raw with exposed nerves, and he smiled when
he saw she was pointing a gun at a man. 

The man’s face was slim and aesthetic, with high cheekbones and odd
tilted eyes. The face showed no sign of fear, not one little drop. The 
man held a younger woman to his chest; held a long knife to the younger 
woman’s throat. Her eyes were wide with fear. Corman could tell, even 
from this distance that her eyes were a startling light blue. 

The woman with the gun was breathing heavily. It masked her, blinded her
to the soft footfalls as Corman crept closer. Corman looked at the man 
again, and was startled to see the man looking right at him. The girl 
was staring at him also, her blue eyes bulging outward as she attempted 
to warn her mother. The foreign man's hand tightened on her throat, 
choking her off. 

The man's eyes expected Corman to act. Before he fully realized what he
was doing, he had surged forward the last few paces. He stunned the 
woman with a blow to the back of her head, and scooped her in his arms 
as she fell. That wasn’t so bad, Corman thought. He heard an agonized 
moan escape the lips of the woman he held, and looked up to see the man 
with the knife slowly push the blade into the tender flesh of the 
younger woman’s throat. 

Corman stared with wide eyes as the virgin blood of the girl spilled
over pommel and hand, soaking both with the permanent stain of the 
crimson flood. He felt the body go limp in his hands, and looked down 
at the woman confused. He was naked, and so was she. She was also dead. 
He was buried in her, and his hands were locked around her slim throat. 
Her eyes were wide open, tongue huge and black setting her lips apart. 

“I don’t want to serve you!” Corman screamed, backing away from the
corpse of the woman. How long had he been . . . ? She was cold to the 
touch; everything was cold as he spun around, looking about him with 
confusion. His manhood was still stiff, and part of him – a big part – 
wanted to go back to the cold embrace of the dead woman. He looked at 
his new benefactor, and realized that the man was eating the girl. Her 
body was half gone, but her pale face was still in beauty respite. A 
tiny drop of blood hung at the corner of her mouth. 

The man smiled. Corman expected to see gaping teeth, but the smile was
perfectly normal but for the blood liming the man’s lips and teeth. “I 
am the Hand,” the man said, and bent back to his task. 

A flood washed through Corman. He stared with eyes to wide, as whatever
passed for his soul fought for its existence. It fought gamely, but 
Corman had abused himself to long, had ignored all but the purely 
physical. He did not know the exact moment that he lost. He just knew 
the cold enveloped him. He screamed in agony and joy, and could tell 
neither one from the other. 


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