Voice.

Chapter 13.

Johnny danced up the sidewalk toward his house. G.o.d, what a buzz! What a night! He had owned that room. He remembered the room, rapt and enthralled, during "Watching the World End," and he laughed.

"Could have heard a pin drop during that motherf.u.c.ker," he said, punching the air.

He put his key in the lock of his front door, and suddenly the feeling that somebody was watching him returned so strongly it felt almost like a hand touching his neck. He spun around, dropping the keys on the ground. There was no one. Even across the street, the lights were out and the curtains closed. That did little to dispel his sudden fear; if anything, it worsened, tightening a cold hand around his heart.

"Anyone there?" he asked, and immediately wished he hadn"t. His voice sounded pitiful and frightened, and if somebody was there, it wouldn"t do much to deter them.

He looked around again, across the flat expanse of lawn. There wasn"t so much as a thin sapling sticking up out of the ground, nowhere for anyone to hide at all. He tried to convince himself that he was rea.s.sured, but he didn"t really feel better.

He picked up his keys, sure that now, when his back was turned and he was in an awkward position, something would leap out of-somewhere-and grab him with sharp claws, either tearing him to b.l.o.o.d.y bits on his own doorstep or dragging him off to a place he tried not to think of these days-but nothing happened.

Johnny unlocked the door and let himself in.

The stench was thick, almost unbearable, and it came rolling out of the house like a dockside fog bank, conjuring images of gutted fish and heaps of rotting chum. Johnny gagged. His eyes watered and his stomach roiled. This was the worst it had been, ever. He couldn"t go in there. Oh, h.e.l.l no. He turned, leaning back against the outside of the house. The door hung open, gaping idiotically.

"G.o.d, what the f.u.c.k is that?" Johnny asked, covering his mouth and nose. And how had it gotten so bad? There was no way he was going to believe that anything could stink like that unless something dead had gotten into the house. Right. Like a twelve-foot catfish rotting under the floorboards. Who do you think you"re kidding, Johnny? But again, that line of thought went somewhere he wouldn"t want to go even in broad daylight standing in the middle of I-35, let alone here at night, lost in the shadows between the two looming houses on the neighboring lots.

He uncovered his mouth and inhaled tentatively. It was bad out here now, and he thought that if it got much worse the neighbors might finally complain. Hopefully the house was airing out some, though. There weren"t a h.e.l.l of a lot of other places he could spend the night. He took another breath. It was definitely clearing some, at least outside. If he opened a few windows, maybe it would clear out inside, too.

Johnny got up and went in. The smell had thinned out, dropping from inducing instant nausea to merely causing mild dizziness. The prescription drug from h.e.l.l. That struck him as less funny than it should have been.

Leaving the door open, he stepped into the living room and flicked the light switch. Faces of dead rock stars-and a few living-stared at him from the wall. He imagined he could see approval in some of their faces, though others were more reserved in their approval. Bjork, a holdover from the previous tenants that he"d somehow never managed to take down, looked downright baleful. The stare on her pale face gave him the shivers.

Losing your cool here, buddy. Even so, she had to go. He tore the poster off the wall, crumpled it into a ball, and let it fall on the floor where he stood. Serve that b.i.t.c.h right, he thought.

He turned and-and Sweet Jesus Christ, there was somebody looking in the back window! A leering face was pressed to the kitchen window, tongue outstretched and waggling at him, eyes bulging and rolling. The laughter in his throat turned to one long, wretched scream, and he fell backward, hitting his a.s.s on the slab hard enough to slam his mouth shut. His teeth clacked together and he scrambled back, anything to get away from that horrible face in the window.

The face was gone suddenly, and Johnny heard leaves scratch against the house and a branch break as something heavy ran through the growth. It was coming around the side of the house-and the door was wide open. The thought jolted Johnny to his feet, and he launched himself at the door- Too late. He hit the wood a fraction of a second too late, and the creature on the other side slammed into the door with all its weight, sending the door swinging back, smashing Johnny"s face and knocking him to the floor.

He pushed himself backward again, scrabbling for purchase on the slab or the carpet or anything, scooting back toward the hall, back away from the creature, the thing. It walked like a man, and it was dressed like a man-a man who had been out for a few drinks tonight, Johnny noticed even in his terror-but that face belonged to nothing human. It bulged and leered and grimaced and twitched, lips peeling back and tongue flopping and eyes wide enough to show bloodshot white on all sides. A small gold cross on a chain around its neck glinted in the light, adding the final perverse touch that seemed to push Johnny to the brink of madness.

"Johnny!" it said, cackling, and there was wicked delight in its rolling eyes. "Oh, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny!"

Johnny sprang to his feet faster, it seemed, than he"d done anything in his life, and leaped for the door, hoping to get around it somehow.

Not fast enough. It stumbled toward him before he got past-not a pretty or graceful maneuver, but with enough energy to bounce Johnny off the wall. The cheap wall shuddered, and Johnny fell again. The thing hunched over him.

Johnny drew breath to scream, scream loud enough to p.i.s.s off the neighbors, draw the cops, wake up babies a block away, and then- A voice. A ragged whisper, right in his mind, calm and forceful, commanding this time instead of questioning.

Wait.

He froze. He could no longer tell if he even wanted to move-he knew only that he wasn"t moving.

The creature bent down, seized him by his shoulders with its face twitching and gabbling inches from his own, and pulled him up.

It set him on his feet and then embraced him.

Johnny could hear the weird smacking sounds its mouth made as it jerked and s...o...b..red, and he shuddered, trying to move his head as far away as possible.

Then it started talking, a babbling whisper right in his ear with drops and blobs of spit flying onto Johnny"s neck, his ear, in his hair.

"Oh, Johnny Johnny, oh, my brother, oh yes, you called and I heard you, you were far but my ears, yes, my ears are keen, you called and I came, I came, I will come again soon, we will all come again soon, all of us all of us for you, Johnny."

The babbling, crazed creature pulled back, holding Johnny"s shoulders again for all the world like an aunt about to tell him how big he"d gotten. It had bitten its tongue in its contortions, and now blood as well as spit spattered Johnny"s face as it gibbered.

It grinned impossibly wide, showing an unholy number of even, white teeth, and then its eyes rolled up in its head and it collapsed.

Johnny stepped back as it hit the floor. With its face relaxed by unconsciousness, Johnny could see now that it really was just a man. Just a man with gelled hair and a couple of days" worth of stubble . . . and small ragged tears at the corners of his mouth with smears of fresh blood around them, from opening his mouth wider than it was ever meant to go.

The man moaned and rubbed his eyes. He seemed perfectly human now, and it occurred to Johnny that he had a strange man, certainly hurt and possibly hurt badly, on his living-room floor. He stared, unsure of what to do. Should he call the cops? An ambulance?

No, the voice whispered. All will be fine. Simply wait.

Again, the voice was calm and rea.s.suring, and Johnny felt that it knew the right way to proceed. But what was going on? Had he finally snapped? Why was he getting private messages in his head?

"What are you?" he asked.

He felt rather than heard some vast, dark merriment, and then the voice: Why don"t you call me Johnny?

Case walked up the stairs to her second-floor apartment with Brad following closely behind.

Action, she thought. No thinking.

She stopped outside her door, put her guitar case down, and got out her keys. She turned the key in the lock.

No thinking. Just doing. There had been a time in her life-most of it, really-when that was all she did. She had just acted. She"d gotten in a lot of trouble and f.u.c.ked a lot of people over, but she had never felt any remorse over it. People made their choices, and if they didn"t always deserve what they got, they usually came close enough. She"d moved on to the next thing, and so had they.

That sort of thing piles up after a while, though. Yeah. You couldn"t live like that forever. Eventually you had to stop, stay put, and live with your mistakes, or at least you did if you were serious about being a musician. It was tough to get gigs when you changed towns every eight or ten months.

She pushed the door open. She could feel Brad"s presence, a faint warmth just behind her.

No thinking, she reminded herself. Not now. All that thinking, all that consideration wasn"t doing her any favors lately. Or maybe it was, but the favors were the slow kind-goodwill built up over months rather than wiped out with careless words and anger before it could get started, friendship that required more patience than she"d ever demanded of herself outside practice. If there was gratification to be had from all this effort and patience, it sure as h.e.l.l wasn"t the instant kind.

No. And there"s a time for instant gratification. That would be right now, in case you weren"t paying attention. She could feel-or imagined she could feel-Brad"s breath tickling her neck, and she wondered how his hands would feel on her skin.

Case picked up her guitar case and went in.

The place was a mess, but she didn"t care, and she doubted he would either. She pa.s.sed the light switch in the kitchen-too bright, too glaring-and turned on a lamp instead. Then she slid the guitar case behind her beat-up secondhand sofa and turned around to face Brad, bringing her eyes up to meet his directly. He might have been hesitant before, but he didn"t flinch now. He stared right back, hungry. His lips-full, almost swollen-looking-were parted ever so slightly, and his breath came rapidly. Case felt suddenly warm.

No thinking.

She shrugged off her jacket-an old jean jacket, since Johnny had taken custody of her leather one-and let it drop to the floor. She raised her eyebrows in a silent question or maybe a challenge, and then she slouched back against the wall and waited.

He needed no further invitation. A moment later, he stood in front of her, leaning down as she tilted her head up-and he stopped. He hesitated, but this wasn"t his earlier uncertainty. This was deliberate. He stopped, close enough that now she could feel his breath, those swollen, exquisite lips just waiting . . . waiting . . .

She let him wait. His breathing grew louder, and his shoulders trembled when he let a breath out. Two breaths. Three. He put his hands on her waist, and now she stopped breathing. She had expected soft, office-boy hands, but his fingers were hard and callused and rough against her skin, deliciously, intoxicatingly so, and she gasped as he slid them up just under the hem of her shirt.

She leaned in, brushed her lips against his so lightly that it was more of a faint electricity than a touch at all. Now he moved toward her, but she pulled back from the kiss even as she pushed her hips against his body. A low moan, warm and musical, escaped his throat. She bit her lip.

Then his hands were moving again, pushing her shirt up below her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, tracing lines on her body that set fire to her nerve endings and raised goose b.u.mps all the way down to her feet.

She grabbed his shirt in both fists (and had it been an ugly shirt? could she even remember?) and pulled him to her, and now, finally, at last, he brought his mouth down to hers. He was teasing, then insistent, then teasing again, and now it was her turn to make a noise.

She tore his shirt open. b.u.t.tons went flying, bouncing off the carpet, skittering across the kitchen linoleum. He laughed and helped her pull her own shirt off, then pivoted neatly, sitting on the arm of the couch and pulling her after him. She stood in front of him as he nuzzled and gently bit the skin of her neck. A mischievous impulse seized her, and she put her hands on his shoulders to shove him backward onto the couch- And then, for no good reason she could see, an image occurred to her. Danny, meeting her eyes as she left the bar, then downcast and miserable as she turned away.

It was as though somebody had switched her off. All the electricity drained away, faded just like it did when she turned off her amplifier, with a little sound that died away so quickly you weren"t sure you"d really heard it. Her body stiffened. She saw Brad in front of her, half dressed and somehow ridiculous now, his eyes half lidded, his lips pursed and mouth open.

"What?" he asked, and the ridiculous expression was gone, replaced by one of confusion and anxiety. "What did I do?"

NO THINKING! part of her screeched. Push him down on the couch and LET"S GET ON WITH THIS! But it was no good. s.e.x had lost all its appeal all of a sudden, and it wasn"t coming back.

Case s.n.a.t.c.hed her shirt up off the floor. "You didn"t do anything," she said, busying herself with her shirt so as not to look at him. "You were great."

His brow furrowed, eyebrows pressed together. "I"m always happy to hear that, but usually it comes later in the evening." He tried on a grin. "If at all."

"It"s not you, it"s me. Really. This may be the only time you"ll ever hear that from somebody who really means it."

He sighed. It was a lost sound, and maybe a little resentful. She could hardly blame him. "How rea.s.suring," he said. "So I should probably go, huh?"

"Yeah."

He stood up.

"Look, I"m sorry," Case said. "This is . . . It"s just been a f.u.c.ked-up night, you know?"

He shrugged. "It happens." He put his hands in his pockets and stood awkwardly for a moment. "So I"m going to leave a card," he said. "If you feel like it, call me."

"You still want me for the session?" she asked, surprised.

"Yeah." He took a couple of steps toward the door. "And, you know-I"d like to see you again. Maybe we"ll go a little slower next time."

"That would be good," she said. The words sounded harsh. She softened her tone. "I mean, I"d like that."

"All right. See you later."

"Later."

He left.

Case lay down on the couch and stared at the ceiling. No thinking? Ha. She had a feeling she was going to be doing a lot of thinking that night. A whole lot.

Danny came back to the table after a brief conversation with the manager, the evening"s take in his pocket. Amazingly, the manager seemed willing to talk about future booking-must have been a good headcount, Danny thought, because three-quarters of the band had nearly been involved in some kind of brawl that Danny had half-observed from across the room.

"You ready to go?" he asked Gina. She nodded vigorously. He took her hand and navigated her through the sea of people to get to the door.

Once outside, Danny tried to get a read on Gina"s emotions. Her face was strained and tired, the way it had been the last couple of times she"d come to a show.

"Headache?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Not bad. The earplugs helped."

"Oh. Good." They walked past a couple of other clubs. Dance music thumped in one of them, making the windows vibrate and the reflections shiver. He led Gina around a puddle of yellow vomit on the sidewalk, still studying her face for some reaction. He saw nothing besides slight disgust at the puke on the ground, but then even that was gone.

It took only a few minutes to get to her car, but it felt much longer. Finally, Danny had to ask, if only to get something from her, some indication of how she felt about . . . anything.

"So. What did you think?"

Now she looked at him. She looked calm in the darkness, but then the headlights of a pa.s.sing car swept across her face, and Danny"s heart clenched like a fist. Her face wasn"t calm-it was frozen. Deliberately still. Who knew what currents pushed and pulled beneath that surface?

Gla.s.s smashed somewhere, and a man started shouting.

"Do I need to be worried?" she asked him, face still unreadable. Danny knew she wasn"t talking about the noise, or about the fight that had nearly gone down earlier.

"About what?" he said. He tried for casual, but his voice was higher than normal and reedy.

She only looked at him, face still impa.s.sive. Frozen or maybe chipped out of stone.

"No," Danny said. "You don"t have to worry. There"s nothing to worry about."

"See you at home," she said, and she got in the car.

Danny stood in the dark lot and watched her drive away.

Chapter 14.

Johnny pounded the stapler with his fist and got a nice, satisfying chunk! out of it. It was two days since the last show, more than three weeks before the next, and he knew it was mostly a waste of time to put up flyers this soon, but it gave him something to do while he wandered up and down Commerce Street, searching. Waiting.