Lovely Death Page 14

  Nick knew there was only one thing for him to do. He slowly pressed Layla away from him and reached behind his neck to find the loop of string.

  “Layla, I know this is probably the worst possible time, but I need you to tell me everything you can remember about the Black Tar Man, or the man in the shadows. Was there anything else he said to—”

  Nick felt Layla tense in his lap before he saw the shadow in the mirror. An inordinate amount of light shone through the back of the Cougar and it took Nick a moment to realize what it was: a police cruiser. Blue LED strobes danced back and forth in the rearview mirror and Nick watched as a hefty patrolman edged his way along the highway shoulder toward the driver’s window.

  “Fuck,” Nick said. He pushed Layla into the passenger seat, let the necklace fall again against his chest as he reached for the window button.

  The blocky form of a man filled the window. His baby blue bulletproof vest was worn on the outside of his uniform, as per Chicago PD standard procedure, and was covered by a well-weathered leather coat. The bullish officer leaned down, shining a flashlight into Nick’s lap.

  “Good evening, sir.”

  “Evening, officer,” Nick said. “I’m guessing you’re probably wondering what we’re doing here on the side of the road.”

  “You guess correctly,” the officer said. Nick squinted, read the name Marczyk on the man’s badge. “License and registration, please.”

  “Officer, please, let me assure you that we’re not causing any problems. We just got into town and my girlfriend here isn’t feeling too hot.”

  Officer Marczyk cleared his throat and spat on the ground. When he poked his head through the window Nick could smell Doublemint gum on his breath, barely masking the smell of stale tobacco smoke. He shined his light in Nick’s face, forcing him to shield his eyes with his hand. “I was a quarter of a mile back when I saw you veer off the road, young man. Very reckless driving, if you ask me, especially given the classic status of this cherry vehicle. And more importantly, the fact that you’ve got a passenger.”

  Officer Marczyk pointed his light in at Layla, letting it slowly drift its way up her body to finally settle on her face. And that was when things took a turn for the worst.

  “What’s your name, sugar?”

  Layla took a ragged breath and wiped her eyes. She tried to give her best smile.

  The Officer’s voice lowered almost a full octave. His free hand went to his utility belt, where it rested upon the butt of his pistol. He repeated the question.

  “Layla,” she said softly. When she spoke again it was louder. “Layla Alden, sir. I’m sorry my face is such a mess. I just woke up from a terrible nightmare and I think I about scared Nick right off the road.”

  It was some of the best improvisational acting Nick had ever seen.

  “Just sit tight, ma’am,” the officer said in a grave tone. “Everything’s going to be alright.”

  When Nick saw the man’s chest begin to heave he knew something was wrong. He drew his weapon out of its holster and pointed it toward the ground. “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to step out of the car.”

  “Officer, please,” Nick started.

  “Now,” demanded the policeman. “Keep your hands where I can see them. Don’t you dare move another muscle, asshole.”

  “Listen, there’s obviously been some sort of misunderstanding. I think you’ve maybe mistaken us for someone who—”

  “Just shut up and get out of the car. I want you to slowly open the door and step out of the vehicle. Do it now or I will drag you out of that window.”

  Nick nodded, feeling sweat form on his palms. He had no idea what was going on here. Unless the officer had seen Layla’s face and mistakenly surmised that he’d been beating on her or something.

  “Officer, what’s the matter?” Layla queried from the passenger seat. A dagger of pain lanced inside her skull and she cried out.

  “Leave her alone, asshole. Open that door right this second.”

  Nick did as he was told, trying to think of some way to talk himself out of this madness.

  As he pulled the handle on the door, the sound of Layla’s returned sobs made him pause. He reached down to his chest, snapped the key free before the officer could protest, and threw it into her lap.

  “Wear this,” he said. “It will protect you.”

  In the next moment, Nick was aware of the door being jerked open and his body being forcibly ripped from the car. It happened in the blink of an eye.

  “Wait!” Nick cried. “Just wait a fucking second!”

  His shoes dragged across the asphalt while passing motorists honked, and the next thing he knew, white hot pain dashed his temple as his head was slammed against the cold, white hood of the police cruiser.

  “Got you, shithead.”

  “I don’t understand what the fuck is going on here!” Nick said. “This is crazy!”

  “That girl in the front seat of your car, the pretty little thing with the busted up face? The one you kidnapped? She’s been all over the news today. Washington State’s been looking for your ass. God only knows how the hell you winded up clear over here in Illinois.”

  Terror poured into Nick’s guts.

  “No, wait! I can explain!”

  “Save the explaining for the judge, scumbag. You’re under arrest.”

  Eighteen

  Sweet fucking hell.

  Layla panted, gulping air in haggard breaths. Her forehead was pressed against the spongy cushion of the dashboard, just above the little silver knob of the glove box. She stared at the floor, feeling an icy coolness flush through her system. It was uncomfortable at first, but quickly gave way to relief as she realized what was happening. The cool radiance began in her left hand, the one in which she held the skeleton key, and fired through the rest of her system like a cleansing burst of ice water.

  It was healing her. At once, the recent, stiff aches of her body disappeared along with any trace of the crippling migraine. Whatever this key was, wherever it had come from, it had wiped away all traces of that creeping, malignant dark magic that had threatened to overtake her. All of the dread and fear the dark man had willed into her was stripped away completely by the coolness of the piece of silver in her hand.

  Layla’s mind cleared. Her thoughts became fully visible to her, as if exposed by the beacon of a lighthouse through the fog. She rubbed wetness from her eyes and wiped it on her pants. She felt confidence in her movements, a clear control of her own muscles that she had rarely ever felt before. The closest comparison to the sensation she’d ever felt before was the feeling of absolute strength she sometimes got in her legs when she was kicking ass on the treadmill. This, however, affected her entire body. It was amazing, especially after having been lamed by the dark man’s poisonous shadow.

  She sat upright in her seat and looked around the car. And that was when she remembered what was going on. Electric blue LED lights illuminated the interior of the Cougar. The driver side door hung wide open, and passing motorists gaped in at her as they sped past on the highway.

  “Oh no,” Layla said. “Oh fucking shit.”

  She spun in her seat to witness the bullish police officer pressing Nick’s head down against the hood of the patrol car. He was being arrested. Because of her. That was only partially true, of course. In fact, on the surface, the arrest was completely warranted. But Layla knew better. She had known Nick was not a bad man before, but now she understood. She understood the darkness that had possessed him, and knew that his momentary lapse of violence had been caused by supernatural forces beyond his control or comprehension.

  Layla turned to her own door, snatched at the handle, and pressed outward. She had barely put her foot out the door when something forced her to pause. It was the glinting silver knob of the glove box. Had it not been for the intervention of the healing key, she would have never thought twice of it.

  Layla twisted the knob and the box dropped open to reveal some miscellan
eous registration papers, and Nick’s gun. Layla was no legal expert, but she knew that traveling across country with a loaded weapon couldn’t be legal. Especially in a city like Chicago, where gun violence trumped the loss of life daily in both the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars combined. The key had shown her reason. Even though it was certain that her testimony would set Nick free from ever seeing the inside of a jailhouse, if and when the Cougar was torn apart in the meantime by the police, that pistol could land Nick in some serious trouble. She didn’t know how she knew these things, but she did.

  And so Layla picked up the gun and closed the glove box. The death machine was heavy in her hands, heavier than she expected. She looked out the passenger window, considered the probability of her being able to dispose of the gun without the officer noticing. She turned to watch the scene unfolding behind her at the squad car, waiting for her perfect opportunity.

  What she saw was a thing of terrible wonder. It was so bewildering that Layla turned her full body around in the front seat to watch out the rear window.

  Five yards behind the Cougar, Nick’s skull had been forced down against the hood of the police cruiser. The arresting officer was fumbling on his belt with his free hand, looking for his handcuffs while pinning Nick down with the other. He was talking, lips moving slowly and deliberately in Nick’s direction while he smiled. The cop was grinning ear to ear. This capture was going to make him a hero. At least until Layla had her say.

  But Layla would not get her say. She would never get the opportunity to clear Nick’s name. Because in the next moment, Nick’s body thrust upright like a spring loaded hinge. His back snapped erect and his previously bound arms flew free of the officer’s grasp. Nick spun around with unnatural speed and a menacing, hunched posture that Layla had seen him exhibit only once before.

  The officer had taken a step back, toward the road and was given a sharp honk by a passing pair of headlights. He reached for his gun holster while pointing a stern finger at Nick. His hand never found the pistol. Instead, his outstretched arm was seized by Nick, who waited for the precise moment to spin him around like a shot-put ball and hurl him into the oncoming traffic.

  The policeman was swung directly into the path of a passenger van traveling down the Dan Ryan Expressway doing almost seventy miles an hour. He didn’t feel a thing. He couldn’t have. Five thousand pounds of solid steel and rubber hit him like a blast of thunder. Tires screeched and the smell of burning brakes filled the night air. Car horns bleeped as the van swerved into the concrete median and the officer’s bloody body skidded to a halt fifteen feet past the nose of the Cougar.

  Layla screamed. The pistol toppled from her fingers to land in the back seat. The key dropped, as well. She scrambled across the console to land awkwardly in the driver’s bucket seat. She never took her eyes off the fallen officer. He most certainly had to be dead, but that did not quell her natural instinct to clamber to his aid. In no time at all a half dozen other passenger vehicles had slowed to a stop. People had begun climbing out of the cars, had started trying to assess the scene with cell phones in their hands.

  Layla’s hands were on the door frame, hoisting her out of the car, when she was suddenly shoved back inside. Nick pried the fingers of her left hand free from the frame and kicked her solidly in the chest. The air was beaten from her lungs in one solid blow. Her body fully collapsed back inside the car. Her attacker slammed the driver’s door and lurched around the nose of the Cougar. People were screaming outside. And then he was at the passenger door. Even if she had been in proper control of her breathing, Layla could not have reached to lock it in time.

  Nick more or less fell into the passenger seat. His movements were jerky, unrefined, like Frankenstein’s monster in the old Universal picture, learning how to operate a strange set of muscles. He was moving; his eyes were open, but his body was like a vehicle being operated by a foreign driver, twitching with improper control.

  Layla would have screamed if she’d been capable. She gripped the steering wheel with one hand, attempting to pull herself away from Nick, now keenly aware of the monster in the car. She tried to squeeze as far as possible from those obsidian eyes that now bore into her. She had seen this madman before, if only briefly. Layla had witnessed the transformation on the night she and Nick had met, right before he’d tried to kill her.

  Her body’s fight or flight response took over then, overriding the shock and fear. Auto-pilot self-preservation caused her to turn in her seat and again try for the door handle at her elbow. She felt the slick bar of chrome beneath her fingertips and with pained tears in her eyes, she pulled on it. But just as the latch began to give way, her arm was snatched back with violent force.

  “No you don’t, bitch!” Nick spat. His voice was full of gritty hoarseness. He was not Nick Aragon, not anymore. This was the dark man. “Sit in that seat and do not move a muscle.” His tar black eyes regarded her with their frighteningly abysmal depth, threatening to suck the very essence out of her. “You will do nothing, child. Not until I give say. Ahh…yes, you do recognize me. You will behave as I wish or I’ll throw you back in your cage, yes?”

  Layla took shallow, gulping breaths as her diaphragm began cooperating with her lungs once again. The sound of his voice turned the tears in her eyes from those of pain to ones of fear. She had no idea what his immediate intention was, but she knew that she could not spend another moment in that subterranean cell, surrounded by the fictional Leonard Harrow and his very real collection of stinking human skins. She averted her eyes from the gruesome man sitting in the bucket seat opposite hers, looking for anything that could help her to survive his wrath.

  Nick put a hand to his head, swooned forward for a second, and then recovered. “He will see this. He will see what he has done to that lawman. And once he has, he will not be able to live with himself.”

  Layla glanced out the window, where almost a dozen passersby had stopped to investigate the unfolding scene. A few had cell phones already strapped to their ears. And a few more were casting curious looks at the parked muscle car with the blacked out windows.

  Nick produced the bullet from his pocket, eyed it with an amused chuckle. A second later his hand shot forward to the glove box. It dropped down, empty save for a few expired registration papers. His face twisted, lower jaw jutting out at Layla. Spittle flew as he spoke.

  “Where is it?”

  “What?” she said meekly.

  In an instant, Nick’s hand was at her throat, pressing her head roughly into the window. The man who was now just a shell of her former friend snarled in her face. The breath that hit her smelled like burning meat.

  “No games, you silly whore. I don’t have time. I need that pistol and I need it right this moment.”

  Layla screamed. It was a pitiful sound, which got caught up in her choking throat. She pulled at the forceful hands but his grip was solid as stone. It was as fruitful as trying to pry open a locked vise. And then she stopped struggling. Her throat may have been seized, but she realized that the monster was not trying to kill her. Not yet, anyhow. He was holding her in place. He needed something.

  “I can taste it on your filthy little soul, girl. You know the truth of the matter, and so will I. Tell me now.”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “Tell me now, bitch hound!”

  The words that fell from Layla’s tongue next came with neither thought nor hesitation.

  “I threw it out,” she blurted, followed by a cough.

  Nick’s jaw flexed like a steel trap, muscles rippling furiously.

  “I thought he was going to hurt me,” Layla continued. “I thought he was going to use it on me so I threw it away when he wasn’t looking. It’s in the trashcan of a gas station back in Washington.”

  Nick’s lips pulled back in a menacing rictus. He clenched the teeth together violently, gnashing the air in front of Layla’s face. Layla felt the fingers tighten around her larynx. His obsidian eyes ground into her like stone weights.
She could not meet his gaze. Even as his grip firmed, and her airway closed, even panic would not allow her to look into those hollow pools of vacuous death.

  And it was that willful ocular aversion that led her to notice the thing sitting behind the gear shifter. It rested atop the molded black plastic of the console, nestled among a pool of black shadow. Its metal was far from shiny new, but the skeleton key glinted back at her nonetheless through the relative darkness. She reached for it with her right hand. It was too far away.

  “You whore dog,” the monster spat. He clenched his teeth and squeezed her neck even tighter, drawing white dots at the corners of her vision. “I can read the lies straight from your filthy heart. The gun is in the back seat. And with it, my bargain is met.”

  With one hand still wrenching the life from her, he let the other bring the bullet up to her face. He rapped it against her skull a few times. The pain would have been substantial, but Layla’s mind had begun to slip into a freefall, taking the sensations of her body with her. Her fingertips were going numb from a lack of oxygen. She would be out in a matter of seconds.

  “Which means that you will now be permitted to die.”

  Searing white enveloped Layla’s existence and though it was impossible through a crushed airway, she wanted nothing more than to scream. She thought of the police officer in the road, saw the battered and bloody mess of his body sprawled out on the headlight-stained asphalt. She thought of death and the sweet release it would bring from this terrible moment. She thought of her mother. She thought of the scalding water punishments. She thought of the fury and the pain, and the terrible drive to rebel that it had buried deep within her. It was limited by the constraints of her fading consciousness, but Layla gargled a ferocious scream of final defiance and reached outward.

  Layla’s fingertips grazed the top of the key.

  The reaction was instantaneous. It was as if a circuit had been completed, blasting a fiery current of electricity through her and into Nick. While Layla was unharmed by the blast, Nick shot backward into his own seat.