City of Heretics by Heath Lowrance Page B

wrong. They were too alone, him and the cat. It shouldn’t have been here, in this dark place. He felt a shameful rage welling in him when he realized this. He felt a strange betrayal. The cat had trespassed in his world, the one place he was safe from… from whom?  From them .
    The cat was looking at him from the base of a huge maple tree, about five feet away. Dark gray eyes glittered. It was sitting and looking at him and then for a split-second he saw what it was going to look like, with its jaw ripped wide and one arm torn away, blood seeping into the undergrowth and insides scattered, and he tried to say, Go away cat, don’t let it happen, go away, but no words would come. It only gazed at him in that curious cat way, and the horrible vision of its end flashed before him again, and he knew he was some sort of Holy Man right then, some sort of Sacrificial Priest. Choking back a sob, he took a step toward it.
    And woke up, feeling an unsettling sort of holiness , of dark and ugly divinity .
    The nightmare shook him up. Crowe had killed men. He’d put many more in the hospital. He had every intention of carrying on in that manner.
    But he liked animals. He didn’t like to see them suffer, particularly cats. He’d sooner kill a man than a cat.
     
    He dozed off again pretty quickly. Faith woke him some six hours later, close to eleven in the morning. She’d just gotten out of the shower, and smelled clean and raw as she worked her lithe brown body over his under the blankets.
    “Time to get up,” she said, nipping at his jaw and neck with her sharp little teeth. “I’m not quite done with you yet.” He could smell rum on her breath already.
    The night before, they’d stopped and bought two bottles on the way, and within an hour they’d finished the first one. He had one drink. In bed, she kept her drink on the nightstand and went often to the kitchen to refresh it. She eventually passed out on top of him.
    They had rough, awkward sex after she woke him, and an hour later he was finally out of her bed and in the shower. Her place was in Midtown, near Overton Square, and driving there from the Libre in her Honda Civic they passed about a hundred bars. He wondered why she worked at the Libre, when there were so many other bars to choose from, but he didn’t ask. People just do what they do.
    She was in the small and homey kitchen, just setting out plates for eggs and bacon and biscuits out of a tin when he strolled in, tucking in his shirt. The second bottle of rum was on the counter, opened and about a third empty. He ignored it.
    “You made breakfast,” he said, more than a little surprised.
    She cocked her head at him, grinning. “Uh, yeah?  Breakfast, it’s something people do, you might’ve heard something about it?”
    She was wearing nothing but lacy panties and an undersized man’s tee-shirt, and he realized it was the first time he’d ever seen her in the daytime, in natural light. She looked smaller somehow, more vulnerable. From her stance, a little defensive, he could tell she was afraid he was going to be a bastard—the old ‘get-laid-get-out’ routine.
    “You have fresh fruit?”
    She smirked. “Fresh fruit, he says. You’ll eat eggs and bacon, and like it.”
    The breakfast looked great, and she looked great, and he sort of didn’t mind being there so much. He sat down at the breakfast table and ate.
    He had six thousand dollars in his pocket, rolled in large bills. Vitower called it a ‘retainer’, and suggested that he use a big chunk of that to buy some good clothes. Between that and the two thou from Jimmy the Hink he was doing okay. Finishing the last of his bacon, he said, “Hey. Get dressed. We’re going shopping.”
    Standing at the kitchen counter and drinking orange juice, she said, “You’re pulling my leg, yeah?  You don’t strike me as the type who spends much time at the mall.”
    “That’s true. And that’s why I need you along. I’m buying some fresh