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  She waved the photographer down, but he was cautiously spreading the legs of his tripod and pulling the cap from his lens. They were in deep shadow here, and perhaps Gaines could stand in plain view and not be seen. Some ID shots would be welcomed, especially since she couldn’t make out the features of any of the three men.

  Her Colt was in her hand, she realized. It, too, felt cold and reptilian. As Blake quietly cranked a lever on his tripod, she leveled the pistol toward the space where the three men would pass. There was a beam of moonlight thrown across the path from one of the windows. Perhaps when they stepped in that, she would see whom she dealt with. Her heart thundered. The snick, snick, snick of Blake’s camera was loud against the quiet flap of three pairs of feet. Leland held her breath and steadied her aim.

  If they hear that cricketing noise, I might have to shoot. The blond man stepped into the shaft of light. Shadowy blueness filled the hollows, crags, and lines of his face. It might have seemed an evil face, corpulent and lit from beneath, except for the sheer terror on it. Then he was gone from the light. Next came the short man, hands rammed down into his pockets. His step had a hitch in it. His face, glowing for a moment, was wan and expressionless, a mask of skin. His dark hair formed a greasy drapery around his head.

  He, too, disappeared into the darkness as he passed. The snick, snick, snick of film continued. The last man, tall and confident, strode easily into the puddle of light. It splashed up his lean figure and lighted a handsome, assured face. He looked directly at the chittering camera, and then at Leland, giving her a knowing wink.

  Azra? Sergeant Michaels? What’s he doing? How did he find out about the sting? How did he insinuate himself into the killer’s confidence? Questions crowded through her. Why didn’t he tell me he had this lead?

  The camera ceased as the three men swept onward. Leland stared numbly after them. They rounded a corner of crates ahead before she could croak into the microphone: “The situation’s changed. There’s a cop with them. The tall one. He’s from Indiana, out of his jurisdiction. They’ve rounded a corner. They’re going toward the north wing. Send five men through the west door to back up. Send ten more to the windows of the north wing. Nobody shoot until I give the order.”

  As the headset crackled with acknowledgment, Leland glanced up to Blake, who was quickly collapsing the tripod. “Let’s go,” she said, her voice trembling. Good, Donna’s here. I knew she’d respond to the anonymous tip. That’s why I’ve not materialized – don’t want her to ID me. She’ll be inspector after this goes off. Imagine her surprise when –

  “W-Wait here,” you say.

  You’re excited. You’re going to hyperventilate. Steady, Keith. You don’t want to screw up this one. He’s your last. Yes. Take it easy. There, the key’s in the lock. There, it’s open.

  You kick back the door into the storage room. The stench in there is incredible. Your john gets a lungful and gags. Puke shoots out in a column from him. It hits you. This is better than I had hoped. You kick him in the crotch. He’s still puking as he crumples. You shove him into the room.

  The other ones are watching. Those that still have eyes are watching. The ones on the left shelves are just skulls now. The ones in the back of the pantry have maggots beneath their pinned eyelids. The rats scurry away from them. The ones on the right, though, they watch you. It is fitting. They should see your last kill.

  You slide off your coat and hang it on a peg on the doorjamb. You reach into your pants and pull out your pistol. A gun in your pocket, and you are happy to see him.

  The john is done heaving. Wiping his mouth, he looks up to you. “Please. Please. Do whatever you want. Just don’t–”

  Your muzzle touches his forehead, and he begins to shy. The bullet cracks through him. He sprays as he rolls to the floor.

  Ah, and now for the hard work of cutting that head off. You put the hot pistol back in your pants, just beside its partner in crime. A knife is in your grip, and you begin to cut. If only you can hold off until the head is free in your hands, the kill will be about perfect. Of course, it all would be done in a second if you only used the ax I’ve hidden behind that bin of hands you’ve got over there. In fact, I think I’ll go get it.

  “A gunshot. It’s going down,” hissed Detective Leland as she bolted around the corner. “Get in here! Everybody!”

  Blake followed her for the first ten paces but stopped behind a waist-high crate and flung out the legs of his tripod.

  Detective Leland rushed onward. The shot had come from that open storage closet ahead. There was movement just within the doorway, but no way of telling who was who.

  “Freeze!” shouted Leland, “Police!” She fetched up behind a crate fifteen feet from the black doorway. Open cement stretched from her to the dark space where the killer worked. “Come out, now, or we’ll fire!”

  Don’t listen to them, Keith. You’ve almost got that head off. Yes. Cut, cut, cut.

  “You have until the count of ten!”

  Don’t listen. They always–Good! Now, pick it up, slide it on.

  “Nine… eight… seven… six…”

  You like it, don’t you?

  “… four… three… two…”

  The ax comes down violently.

  It is an extraordinary measure, I know. It is more than I am supposed to do in orchestrating a death, but Keith’s death needs to be extraordinary. Your hands are severed at the wrists, and they fall with the blond head atop the corpse.

  “… one!”

  Good boy, Keith. Now, jam those wrist stumps in your pockets – that’ll slow the bleeding. Good. And go after the lady cop. She was supposed to die tonight, but instead she’ll get a promotion. Go on ahead. I’ll stay here and clean up for you.

  The short one staggered out the door. His hands were deep in his pockets. He drew forth double pistols.

  “Fire!”

  The blasts from Leland’s Colt were drowned out by the roar of other weapons emptying their magazines into the man. His head was gone in the first heartbeat, only a dark cloud above his shoulders. His body jiggled as entry wounds sprouted all across his abdomen. He seemed yet alive, his gun-toting hands clearing the pockets.

  Except there were no guns – and no hands. His wrists ended in grisly stumps, like those of the other victims. Other victims?“Cease fire!” Leland shouted into the mike as the bullet-riddled body went down, a heap of meat.

  The reports crackled to silence. Leland paused a breath, slid a new set of bullets into her Colt, drew her flashlight, and stood up behind the crate. She leveled the smoking barrel of her gun toward the wedge of darkness and held her flashlight far out to one side to keep from getting shot. The light shone into the storage closet.

  Color suddenly came to the black space. Blood, mostly. A body –

  “Mother of God, no, don’t let it be Azra,” Leland gasped out beneath her breath. She staggered forward. But it wasn’t he. The body was wrapped in a bulky coat. It lay, headless and handless, across the threshold. If that isn’t Azra, then where – ?

  A pair of hunched shoulders moved in the shadows beyond.

  “Stop what you’re doing, raise your hands above your head, and come out!”

  The man did not respond. He continued whatever work he was doing.

  Slow and nervous, Leland advanced to the door. Her flashlight caught patches of the man’s shirt, blood draining from at least two bullet wounds. He was oblivious. He seemed to be churning something. Leland knew those shoulders. She knew this man…

  Twelve years ago, she had walked to a different door, but the cell beyond it had already been emptied. There hadn’t been even a body swinging from the lamp grate. Kerry had already been pulled down, already lay in the sanitarium morgue, cold on steel. She had been too late twelve years ago.

  Perhaps she was too late now.

  Between gritted teeth, Leland growled, “Come out, Azra. You’re surrounded.”

  There was still movement, but no sound. Leland strode steadily
toward the space, finger curled around the hot trigger.

  Keith’s hands will end up on the bottom of this bin. By the time they sort through all the others – Keith’s hand collection – his will be stale, too.

  She’s almost to the door. I’d better stop before she sees motion in the crate.

  “Sergeant Michaels, is that you?”

  What? How can she see me?

  I straighten. My body is casting a shadow against the shelves of maggoty skulls.

  She can see me? What’s gone wrong?

  This is a cardinal sin – to fall in love with a human. I raise my bloody hands over my head and turn around. Just before her gasp, I hear the click, click, click of photographs being taken.

  “Down on your face. You have the right to remain silent…”

  My power had been waning ever since that night in January, but now my descent was complete. My shadow told the story. I was unable to dissolve away into nothing, to slough off the body of Sergeant Michaels.

  “I said, lie down on your face, hands above your head,” Detective Leland shouted.

  I dropped, incredulously, to the cold concrete and felt the warm wicking of blood into my pant legs and the keen, hot jab of a spent bullet under my right knee. It was only then that I knew I had become completely mortal – flesh and bone, descendant of the mudman. The union of angels and humans brings only abomination.

  “Down! All the way!” barked Detective Leland. She kicked away shell casings as she approached. The little brass cylinders made a tinkling bell sound on the cement. The camera answered with cricket calls. I lay down, across the blond man’s legs. His corpse shifted. A sputtering moan came up through the sawed neck. Keith’s body lay face down nearby, except that he no longer had a face. One of Donna’s boots dropped smoothly between McFarland and me, and I lay there, hands laced behind my head.

  Her other boot descended beside the first. With it, I heard shouts from behind her to watch for a trick.

  “Azra, what the hell is this…?”

  “You shouldn’t be able to see me,” I said, trying to explain. “This was supposed to fix everything.”

  “Mother of God, don’t say it. Don’t say it,” she whispered. “But how could it be anything else? How could I be so stupid?”

  She was beside me, now, gun trained on me. I held still. Some impulse of my new flesh knew to do that much. Hold still, and live.

  The boot beside me shifted. I felt her knee pressing into the small of my back. She pulled one of my bloody hands down, behind my back, and then the other, and clamped the handcuffs so tight that my fingers began to swell.

  My body was suddenly heir to all the pangs, twinges, and mortal frailties of any flesh. I trembled. She shifted, her knee still on my back, and pulled one of my feet up toward her. Through the thin knit of my dress sock, I felt the broad band of the ankle cuff snap into place. With a jangle of chain, both my legs were bound.

  There were other boots around hers, now, and the long shadows of sniper rifles fell in bars across me.

  “This is Squad Four, Detective Leland. We’ve got our suspect. Bring in the ambulance crews, Phil – he’s got gunshot wounds.”

  Only then did I feel the injuries – two slugs in my back, just below my right shoulder blade. The ache was dull and ragged. It hurt less than the place where Donna had knelt. How strange that these human bodies are at once so fragile and so insensate. It would have been easy enough to die without ever feeling it or knowing it.

  “…yeah. We’re all breathing a sigh of relief about that. Still, he got two others. Yeah, notify the coroner. There’ll be a set of death investigations. No, no officers down, but two civilians, and a bunch of remains, in various states of–” She stopped talking, staggered away, and was sick over a set of crates.

  I could only lie there and breathe. If I had been an angel still, I would have risen and enwrapped her in my arms. But all I could do was lie there and breathe and know she was more sickened by me than by all those skulls.

  “Sorry, Phil. Yeah, I’ll be okay. Yeah, it’s just a bad sight down here. Yeah. Leland out.”

  Someone else approached, knelt beside me, and set a metal kit next to my head. “Sir, I’m going to be looking at your back. You’ve been shot. Do you understand?”

  I nodded.

  He shifted and cut my shirt away. After a pause, he flipped open the kit and brought out a small bottle, some cotton swabs, a roll of gauze, a roll of tape, and a small pair of scissors.

  As the man set to work sealing the outer wounds for the ride to the hospital, Donna stared down bleakly.

  “So, Azra, explain this.” Her voice quivered. She was pleading. “Mother of God, Azra. Explain this.”

  I breathed raggedly. “I cannot.”

  Her voice rose in intensity. “You know what it looks like, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  The man who was gently dressing my wounds said,

  “You do have the right to remain silent.”

  And then, I was not just still, but silent.

  BOOK II

  SON of MAN

  TEN

  The warehouse doors barked open, and the EMTs charged out, rolling the gurney that bore Azra Michaels. Detective Donna Leland rushed alongside, followed by a crowd of small-town cops. At the curb ahead, civilians clustered around an ambulance. Its flashing lights and the flashing Nikon of Blake Gaines painted the scene in carnival colors.

  There should be a barker, Leland thought. She could almost hear him: “Come one, come all! See Azra, the Incredible Killing Machine! He can chop off heads! He can chop off hands! He can kill in Wisconsin and Illinois and Indiana! For one lucky fan, he’ll kill again, tonight!”

  She could almost see the barker dip his tanned hand into an old bowler and draw forth a slip of paper and read it and shout, “Congratulations, Donna Leland!”

  The EMTs slid the gurney into the back of the ambulance and climbed in alongside. One of the young men shot a freckled look toward the detective and asked,

  “You want to ride along to the hospital?”

  Leland heard the question only after the EMT had stopped speaking it. “Um, you think you – you think you need me?”

  He laughed. “Nah. Between the shackles and the straps and the gunshot wounds, he’s not going anywhere. ’Sides, I got first at State as a Demon wrestler.”

  Detective Leland nodded numbly. Demon wrestler? It was hard to make small talk when everything was so big.

  “Oh, you mean the BHS Demons – the wrestling team.”

  “Well, yeah.”

  Leland nodded. “Sorry. You just seemed more of a Catholic Central kid to me.”

  “Kid?” His eyes popped wide, and he pointed at her.

  “Hey, didn’t you used to be Officer Friendly?”

  “Yeah. Used to be.” Enough small talk. Leland turned and began walking toward her squad.

  “Woo! You kicked ass tonight, Officer Friendly!” he shouted, sounding just like the barker. “Look out, world! It’s Officer Kick-Ass!”

  The other cops cheered briefly before going back to their excited chatter about the murders, the suspect, the newsman, the hospital escort. Leland wished she could hand out balloons and kettle corn.

  The detective opened the door to her squad, sat down, closed the door, turned off the scanner, turned down the radio, breathed in the silence. Insanity.

  I’m in love with him, but he’s a… I don’t even know what. Killer? Accomplice? Liar? Lunatic? All I know is I love him, and he – I thought he loved me…

  God, was he going to kill me?

  The ambulance began to pull away from the curb, and squad cars jockeyed for positions around it. Sighing deeply, Leland shifted into drive and pulled out onto the street and joined the rear of the procession. And what a procession! It was as if the Chocolate City Parade had come early. With lights flashing and sirens blaring, the ambulance and its escort of six squads rolled through the heart of Burlington. Storefronts reflected the strobin
g lights, and the windows of second-floor walkups produced amazed faces that flashed blue and red and white. A few kids came from an alley and ran along the sidewalk, maybe hoping the cops would throw Crunch bars.

  And the festival didn’t end when they reached Memorial Hospital. The emergency room was crowded with edgy paramedics, doctors, deputies, and the occasional reporter. These last were as violently ejected by Blake Gaines as by the police. In the midst of blood and bandages, there were thousands of questions, thousands of non-answers, the staring blanks in the booking form matching the staring blanks of Azra’s eyes. Leland gave up. She listed his aliases – Azra Michaels and Samael – beside the name John Doe. She’d thought she’d known him. She didn’t even know his name. Donna arrived home at 3 a.m. She kicked the latest Gazette off the doormat, fought a swarm of moths away from the porch light, unlocked the door, and staggered alone into a cold, dark house.

  Keys on the counter, gun on the table, clothes on the floor – she crawled into bed. It felt small, as if it had shrunk, never again to admit the man who had shared it with her, and only begrudgingly to admit her. Not that she could sleep. Thoughts of Kerry and Azra warred in her mind. Two lost souls – one gone forever, and the other receding quickly into oblivion. Didn’t you used to be Officer Friendly?

  Yeah. Used to be.

  She’d followed McHenry in the job, just after Kerry’s suicide. She’d hoped to counsel troubled kids, to let them know they had someone they could talk to, never had to feel alone, never had to do anything desperate. Donna’d tried to be a one-woman juvenile crime-prevention unit, but not a single troubled kid had come to her. Apparently, she hadn’t been cool enough – just a mascot, like Sergeant McGruff. She hadn’t known how to reach them.

  Or how to reach him…

  Azra. Talk about a troubled soul. But what was he, really? A sociopath – calculating, unfeeling, manipulative, incapable of recognizing another person’s humanity, incapable of love? Or a psychotic – delusional, schizophrenic, unable to distinguish reality from fantasy, ill and alone in a brutal world?