“Baby, you okay?” he asked as he entered the room.
She didn’t stir and he reached over to touch her shoulder and then he froze. Val was lying on her left side, turned away from him toward the window.
Her left side.
The injured side.
With a cry of terror bubbling on his lips he grabbed the sheet and pulled it down.
She turned toward him, her face and body edged with silver from the pale light from outside, and as she turned Crow felt his heart freeze in his chest and his guts turn to icy slush.
It was not Val at all.
The figure in the bed that grinned up at him with a jagged smile of broken teeth was Karl Ruger!
2
Detective Sergeant Frank Ferro had just finished brushing his teeth, had changed into pajama bottoms, and was about to sit down on the edge of his hotel bed when his cell phone rang. When you’re a cop, a call at midnight is never going to be good news. He picked his trousers off the bedside chair and pulled the cell from the belt clip.
“Ferro. ”
“Frank?” It was his partner, Vince LaMastra, sounding tired but stressed. “Something’s happening at the hospital. ”
“What?”
LaMastra told him.
“Shit,” Ferro said. “Lobby. Two minutes. ”
He snapped the cover of his cell phone shut and reached for his pants.
“Jesus Christ,” he said.
3
Crow’s mind was frozen in a black hell of panic. Ruger lay there in Val’s bed—Val was nowhere to be seen—and none of it was possible.
“Surprise, surprise,” Ruger said, and then without a flicker of warning cocked his foot and kicked Crow in the chest with shocking force. Crow flew backward against the wall of the bathroom cubicle, striking the back of his head with a heavy thud. Fireworks exploded everywhere and he felt his knees starting to go.
In a flash Ruger leaped out of the bed and caught him before he could fall, ta
king two bunched fistfulls of Crow’s robe and hauling him back to his feet. He pulled him close and Crow’s nose was assaulted by the smell of Ruger’s breath—like rot and sewage. It was just the same as it was in the dream he’d had earlier.
“Bet you’re wondering where your little bitch is, aren’t you, boy?” Ruger banged him back against the wall again and again. Crow was more than half dazed and his mind was spinning with a nauseous vertigo.
“Val…” he gasped.
Ruger stopped banging him off the wall long enough to lean close to his ear and whisper, “The bitch is mine, asshole. I’m going to enjoy splitting her right up the middle. ” He slammed him back again and held him there. “But you…I just wanted to introduce myself again before I ripped your fucking heart out. ” He let go of Crow for a second but before Crow could fall, Ruger closed one hand around his throat and pinned him once again to the bathroom wall. He raised the other hand, holding it flat, and simply slapped Crow across the face.
It was the hardest blow he had ever felt. It was like getting hit by a piece of board or a slab of stone. Ruger’s hands were icy cold and immensely powerful. Crow’s head shot to one side and his face felt mashed. Ruger backhanded him, catching the corner of his mouth this time, and the blow ground lip against tooth so sharply that blood splashed from Crow’s face onto Ruger’s.
Ruger stopped hitting him as he opened his mouth and his tongue—gray and dry—quested out like a hungry worm and found the droplets. He licked each one into his mouth, his eyes fluttering half closed for a moment as he savored the taste.
“Oh my God…” he breathed and he looked like a man in the throes of an orgasm. “Oh my God…”
Crow struggled to make his senses work and he shook his head like a drunkard. Ruger’s eyes snapped open again and the look in them—the appearance of them—nearly stopped Crow’s heart in his chest. Ruger’s eyes had changed. They were no longer a brown so dark that they looked black—now they were as red as the blood he’d just licked off his own lips.
Even with a hand clamped around his throat, Crow screamed.