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Brine had come to Pine Cove to avoid conflict, to pursue a life of simple pleasures, to meditate and find peace and oneness with all things. Now, forced to act, he realized how deluded he had become. Life was action, and there was no peace this side of the grave. He had read about the kendo swordsman, who affected the Zen of controlled spontaneity, never anticipating a move so that he might never have to correct his strategy to an unanticipated attack, but always ready to act. Brine had removed himself from the flow of action, built his life into a fortress of comfort and safety without realizing that his fortress was also a prison.
"Think long and hard on your fate, Augustus Brine," the Djinn said around a mouthful of potato chips. "Your neighbors pay for this time with their lives. "
Brine pushed himself out of the chair and stormed into his study. He riffled through the drawers of the desk until he found a street map of Pine Cove. He spread the map out on the desk and began to divide the village into blocks with a red marker. Gian Hen Gian came into the study while he worked.
"What will you do?"
"Find the demon," Brine said through gritted teeth.
"And when you find him?"
"I don't know. "
"You are a good man, Augustus Brine. "
"You are a pain in the ass, Gian Hen Gian. " Brine gathered up the map and headed out of the room.
"If it be so, then so be it," the Djinn shouted after him. "But I am a grand pain in the ass. "
Augustus Brine did not answer. He was already making his way to his truck. He drove off feeling quite alone and afraid.
ROBERT
Augustus Brine was not alone in his feeling of dread at the onset of evening. Robert returned at sunset to The Breeze's trailer to find three threatening messages on the answering machine: two from the landlord, and one ominous threat from the drug dealer in the BMW. Robert played the tape back three times in hope of finding a message from Jennifer, but it was not there.
He had failed miserably in his attempt to crash and burn at the Slug, running out of money long before passing out. The job offer from Rachel wasn't enough either. Thinking it over, nothing would really be enough. He was a loser, plain and simple. No one was going to rescue him this time, and he wasn't up to pulling himself up by his own bootstraps.
He had to see Jenny. She would understand. But he couldn't go looking like this, a three-day growth of beard, clothes he had slept in, reeking of sweat and beer. He stripped off his clothes and walked into the bathroom. He took some shaving cream and a razor from the medicine cabinet and stepped into the shower.
Maybe if he showed up looking like he had some self-respect, she would take him back. She had to be missing him, right? And he wasn't sure he could spend another night alone, thinking about it, going though the nightmare.
He turned on the shower and the breath jumped from his body. The water was ice cold. The Breeze hadn't paid the gas bill. Robert steeled himself to endure the cold shower. He had to look good if he was going to rebuild his life.
Then the lights went out.
RIVERA
Rivera was sitting in a coffee shop near the police station sipping from a cup of decaf, smoking a cigarette, waiting. In his fifteen years on the force he estimated that ten of them had been spent in waiting. For once, though, he had the warrants, the budget, the manpower, and probable cause, but he had no suspect.
It had to go down tomorrow, one way or another. If The Breeze showed up, then Rivera was in line for a promotion. If, however, he had gotten wind of the sting, then Rivera would take down the drunk in the trailer and hope that he knew something. It was a dismal prospect. Rivera envisioned his task force swooping in with sirens blaring, lights flashing, only to chalk up a bust for unsafe vehicle, perhaps unlawful copying of a videotape
, or tearing the tag off a mattress. Rivera shivered at the thought and ground out his cigarette in the ashtray. He wondered if they would let him smoke when he was working behind the counter at Seven-Eleven.
THE BREEZE
When the jaws of the demon had clamped down on him, The Breeze felt a moment of pain, then a light-headedness and a floating feeling he had come to associate with certain kinds of hallucinogenic mushrooms. Then he looked down to see the monster stuffing his body into its gaping mouth. It looked funny, and the ethereal Breeze giggled to himself. No, this was more like the feeling of nitrous oxide than mushrooms, he thought.
He watched the monster shrink and disappear, then the door to the old Chevy opened and closed. The car sped off and The Breeze felt himself bouncing on the air currents in its wake. Death was fine with The Breeze. Sort of the ultimate acid trip, only cheaper and with no side effects.
Suddenly he found himself in a long tunnel. At the end he saw a bright light. He had seen a movie about this once; you were supposed to go toward the light.
Time had lost meaning for The Breeze. He floated down the tunnel, for a whole day, but to him it seemed only minutes. He was just riding the buzz. Everything was copacetic. As he approached the light, he could make out the figures of people waiting for him. That's right: your family and friends welcome you to the next life. The Breeze prepared himself for a truly bitchin' party on the astral plane.
Coming out of the tunnel, The Breeze was enveloped by an intense white light. It was warm and comforting. The people's faces came into view and as The Breeze floated up to them, he realized that he owed every one of them money.
PREDATORS
While night fell on some like a curtain of foreboding, others were meeting the advent of darkness with excited anticipation. Creatures of the night were rising from their resting places and venturing forth to feed on their unsuspecting victims.
They were feeding machines, armed with tooth and claw, instinctively driven to seek out their prey, gifted with stealth and night vision, perfectly adapted to the hunt. When they stalked the streets of Pine Cove, no one's garbage cans were safe.
When they awakened that evening, they found a curious machine in their den. The supernatural sentience they had experienced the night before had passed, and they retained no memory of having stolen the tape player. They might have been frightened by the noise, but the battery had long since run down. They would push the machine out of the den when they returned, but now there was a scent on the wind that drove them to the hunt with urgent hunger. Two blocks away, Mrs. Eddleman had discarded a particularly gamey tuna-fish salad, and their acute olfactory systems had picked up the scent even while they slept.
The raccoons bounded into the night like wolves on the fold.
JENNIFER
For Jenny, evening came as a mix of blessing and curses. The call from Travis had come at five, as promised, and she found herself elated at being wanted but also thrown into a quandary about what to wear, how to behave, and where to go. Travis had left it up to her. She was a local and knew the best places to go, he had said, and he was right. He had even asked her to drive.
As soon as she had hung up, she ran to the garage for the shop vac to clean out her car. While she cleaned, she ran possibilities through her mind. Should she pick the most expensive restaurant? No, that might scare him away. There was a romantic Italian place south of town, but what if he got the wrong idea? Pizza was too informal for a dinner date. Burgers were out of the question. She was a vegetarian. English food? No - why punish the guy?
She found herself resenting Travis for making her decide. Finally she opted for the Italian place.
When the car was clean, she returned to the house to pick out what she would wear. She dressed and undressed seven times in the next half hour and finally decided on a sleeveless black dress and heels.
She posed before the full-length mirror. The black dress definitely was the best. And if she splashed marinara sauce on it, the stain wouldn't show. She looked good. The heels showed off her calves nicely, but you could also see the light-red hair on her legs. She hadn't thought about it until now. She rummaged through her drawers, found some black panty hose and slipped them on.
That problem taken care of, she resumed her posing, affecting the bored, pouty look she had seen on fashion models in magazines. She was thin and fairly tall, and her legs were tight and muscular from waiting tables. Pretty nice for a thirty-year-old broad, she thought. Then she raised her arms and stretched languidly. Two curly tufts of armpit hair stared at her from the mirror.
It was natural, unpretentious, she thought. She had stopped shaving about the same time she had stopped eating meat. It was all part of getting in touch with herself, of getting connected to the Earth. It was a way to show that she did not conform to the female ideal created by Hollywood and Madison Avenue, that she was a natural woman. Did the Goddess shave her armpits? She did not. But the Goddess was not going out on her first date in over ten years.
Jenny suddenly realized how unaware she had become of her appearance in the last few years. Not that she had let herself go, but the changes she had made away from makeup and complicated hairstyles had been so slow she had hardly noticed. And Robert hadn't seemed to notice, or at least he had not objected. But that was the past. Robert was in the past, or he would be soon.
She went to the bathroom in search of a razor.
BILLY WINSTON
Billy Winston had no such dilemma about shaving. He did his legs and underarms as a matter of course every time he showered. The idea of conforming to a diet soft-drink ideal of the perfect woman didn't bother him in the least. On the contrary, Billy felt compromised by the fact that he had to maintain his appearance as a six-foot-three-inch tall man with a protruding Adam's apple in order to keep his job as night auditor at the Rooms-R-Us Motel. In his heart, Billy was a buxom blond vixen named Roxanne.
But Roxanne had to stay in the closet until Billy finished doing the motel's books, until midnight, when the rest of the staff left the motel and Billy was alone on the desk. Only then could Roxanne dance through the night on her silicon chip slippers, stroking the libidos of lonely men and breaking hearts. When the iron tongue of midnight told twelve, the sex fairy would find her on-line lovers. Until then, she was Billy Winston, and Billy Winston was getting ready to go to work.
He slipped the red silk panties and garter belt over his long, thin legs, then slowly worked the black, seamed stockings up, teasing himself in the full-length mirror at the end of the bed. He smiled coyly at himself as he clipped the garters into place. Then he put on his jeans and flannel shirt and laced up his tennis shoes. Over his shirt pocket he pinned his name badge: Billy Winston, Night Auditor.
It was a sad irony, Billy thought, that the thing he loved most, being Roxanne, depended on the thing he liked least, his job. Each evening he awoke feeling a mix of excitement and dread. Oh, well, a joint would get him through the first three hours of his shift, and Roxanne would get him through the last five.
He dreamed of the day when he could afford his own computer and become Roxanne anytime he wanted. He would quit his job and make his living like The Breeze: fast and loose. Just a few more months behind the desk and he would have the money he needed.
CATCH
Catch was a demon of the twenty-seventh order. In the hierarchy of hell this put him far below the archdemons like Mammon, master of avarice, but far above the blue-collar demons like Arrrgg, who was responsible for leeching the styrofoam taste into take-out coffee.
Catch had been created as a servant and a destroyer and endowed with a simplemindedness that suited those roles. His distinction in hell was that he had spent more time on Earth than any other demon, where, in the company of men, he had learned to be devious and ambitious.
His ambition took the form of looking for a master who would allow him to indulge himself in destruction and terror. Of all the mas
ters that Catch had served since Solomon, Travis had been the worst. Travis had an irritating streak of righteousness that grated on Catch's nerves. In the past, Catch had been called up by devious men who limited the demon's destruction only to keep his presence secret from other men. Most of the time this was accomplished by the death of all witnesses. Catch always made sure that there were witnesses.
With Travis, Catch's need for destruction was controlled and allowed to build inside him until Travis was forced to unleash him. Always it was someone Travis had chosen. Always it was in private. And it was never enough for Catch's appetite.
Serving under Travis, his mind always seemed foggy and the fire inside him confined to a smolder. Only when Travis directed him toward a victim did he feel crispness in his thoughts and a blazing in his nature. The times were too few. The demon longed again for a master with enemies, but his thoughts were never clear enough to devise a plan to find one. Travis's will was overpowering.
But today the demon had felt a release. It had started when Travis met the woman in the cafe. When they went to the old man's house, he felt a power surge through him unlike anything he had felt in years. Again, when Travis called the girl, the power had increased.
He began to remember what he was: a creature who had brought kings and popes to power and in turn had usurped others. Satan himself, sitting on his throne in the great city of Pandemonium, had spoken to a multitude of hellish hosts, "In our exile, we must be beholden unto Jehovah for two things: one, that we exist, and two, that Catch has no ambition. " The fallen angels laughed with Catch at the joke, for that was a time before Catch had walked among men. Men had been a bad influence on Catch.
He would have a new master; one who could be corrupted by his power. He had seen her that afternoon in the saloon and sensed her hunger for control over others. Together they would rule the world. The key was near; he felt it. If Travis found it, Catch would be sent back to hell. He had to find it first and get it into the hands of the witch. After all, it was better to rule on Earth than to serve in hell.
