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  He shuddered and tried to pull loose, pushing at her shoulders with his hands. His body obeyed only sluggishly, however, and when she noticed his effort, her body pressed harder against his, pinning him to the wall.

  Use your gun, you dumb flatfoot.

  But her hand easily kept him from reaching it.

  Abandoning pride in favor of self-preservation, he opened his mouth to yell for help. Her hand clamped across his mouth, silencing him.

  Garreth’s breath caught in fear. He no longer had the strength to fight her. Only her weight against him held him upright. She was killing him, as she had killed Adair and Mossman — were human teeth really sharp enough to bite through skin into veins? Where had she learned such depravity? Do something, man! Fight her! Stay alive!

  In desperation, he bit at her hand to make her let go of his mouth. He sank his teeth in deep, using all his fading strength. Skin gave way. Her blood filled his mouth, burning like fire. Convulsively, he swallowed, and his throat burned, too...but with the fire came a surge of new strength.

  Lane jerked the hand to free it, but he bit harder, making the most of the opportunity to hurt her. More blood scorched down his throat. He managed to bring both hands up to her shoulders and push her back.

  But it was too little effort coming too late. She tore loose from him, her hand from his mouth and her mouth from his throat. He felt her teeth rip through his flesh. As she backed away from him, he fell, collapsing to the ground.

  The pain of striking the ground barely reached him. He only saw, not felt, the blood streaming from his torn throat to make a crimson pool around his head. A suffocating fog muffled all sensation...touch, sound, and smells.

  “Good-bye, lover,” a distant, mocking voice said. “Rest in peace.”

  Her footsteps receded into the darkness. Garreth tried to move, to drag himself to the mouth of the alley where he might find help, but a leaden heaviness weighted him down, leaving him helpless. He could not move, only stare into the growing pool of blood draining from him. He cursed his stupidity...for coming after her alone, for not letting someone know what he had found out, but most of all, as his breathing and heartbeat stumbled, faltered, and faded, he cursed himself for underestimating her...just what I Ching warned against. How could he explain this to Marti when he saw her?

  See the idiot cop, he thought bitterly. See him bleeding to death . . . dying alone in a cold and dirty alley.

  Passage

  1

  Rest in peace. Like hell. Death was not peace. It led not to Marti, nor to any kind of heaven . . . not even to oblivion. Death was not that kind. Death was hell.

  It was dreams...nightmares of suffocation and pain, of restless discomfort, of aches impossible to ease, of itches impossible to scratch. It was hallucination invading the void, playing blurrily before half-open eyes unable to focus or follow...imaginary hands on him, patting him, then lights, footsteps, sirens, voices.

  Oh, God! Call the watch commandeer.

  I didn’t kill him, Officer! I’d never kill no cop, and anyway how could I do that to him? I just took the gun and stuff out of his pockets. Would I show you where the body was if I’d done it?

  Garreth?

  Easy, Takananda.

  Garreth! Oh, God, no!

  He hasn’t been dead long; he’s still warm.

  Are there loose dogs in this area?

  Death was hell, and hell was dreams, but mostly, hell was fear...panic-stricken, frantic. Were all the dead aware? Did they remain that way? Was this to be eternity...lying in twilight and nightmares, throat aching with thirst, body crying for a change of position, mind churning endlessly? Did Marti lie like this in her grave, insane with loneliness, begging for peace, for an end? No, not for her...please, no.

  He hated giving up life, but accepted that in the jungle, death was the price of carelessness, of error, and he errored badly. Surrendering life to rejoin Marti would be welcome. He could even accept oblivion. This, though...this limbo? The thought of having to endure it for eternity terrified him.

  He screamed...for himself, for Marti, for all the dead trapped sleepless and peaceless and tormented in their graves. He screamed, and because went unvoiced, it echoed and reechoed endlessly down the long, dark, lonely corridors of his mind.

  The horror escalated. A sheet over him blocked the vision of his eyes; temperature had become all one to him, unfelt; and the lack of breath prevented him from smelling anything, but he knew he lay in the morgue. He had heard its cold echoes on arriving, had felt them park the gurney, and heard the freezer door close. Now he heard, had lain listening for countless time, the hum of refrigeration units while he dreamed nightmares and wished Lane had thrown him in the bay, too. Better to be fish food than lie in this hated purgatory of cold and steel. He prayed for his parents to be spared seeing him here.

  That was when he thought of the autopsy. His heart contracted in fear. What would it be like? How would it feel to lie naked in running water on cold steel, sliced open from neck to hips, shelled out like —

  Heart?

  His mind held its breath...waiting. Yes, there it was! His heart squeezed again. A slow ripple moved outward from it along his arteries. He felt almost every inch of them. A long pause later, his heart squeezed again, then again...settling into a slow but regular rhythm.

  He listened in wonder. If his heart beat, he could not be dead. His body lay leaden, held unmoving on the stainless steel the surface beneath him, but a silent cry of joy banished the darkness inside him. Alive!

  He drew a breath...slow, painfully slow, but a breath nonetheless. He swore his breath and heart stopped in that alley. He had felt — how he had felt! — the silence of his body. What miracle caused the heart and lungs to resume function? He could not imagine, and at the moment, overjoyed with the sound and feel of them, he did not give a damn why.

  But he remained in a morgue freezer, naked under the sheet. Unless he found a way out, the cold would kill him again. Could he attract attention by pounding on the gurney? Calling out?

  He tried, but the weakness that held him motionless the past — how many? — hours persisted. He still could not move. Could not speak.

  Could he survive until they came to take him out for the autopsy? He felt less cold now. Perhaps if he kept alert, he could fight off hypothermia.

  He wished, though, that he could change position. His body consisted of one continuous, unrelenting ache, stiff from neck to toes. By concentrating and straining, he finally managed to move. Like the first heartbeat and the first breath, it came with agonizing slowness. Still, by persisting, he managed to shift his weight off his buttocks and turn on his side. Not that it helped a great deal. He still felt uncomfortable, but at least the position of the aches changed.

  He tried again to call out but managed only a whisper. He would just have to wait for them to come for him.

  He fought his way onto his stomach to change the pressure points once more and felt the sheet slide sideways. Slowly, painfully, he managed to turn on his side again and pull the sheet back over him. Little protection from the cold as it was, it was better than lying bare-assed.

  He did not sleep, but in spite of himself, he must have dozed because the sound of approaching feet startled him. He never heard the door open. Light blinded him as the sheet came off.

  “What clown put this stiff on his side?” a voice demanded.

  If he raised upright, would they faint, Garreth wondered. He wished he could find out, but gravity dragged at him, weighting him. He went without resistance as they rolled him on his back again and rearranged the sheet over him.

  “Hurry,” another voice said. “This one’s a cop and Thurlow wants to get him posted as soon as possible.”

  Garreth worked his hands to the edges of the gurney and clamped his fingers around the rubber bumper. Even if he could not move fast enough to attract their attention and they missed the faint motion of his chest, they could hardly overlook this.

  The gurney ha
lted stopped. An attendant pulled off the sheet. Hands took him by the shoulders and legs and pulled...but Garreth’s grip held him on the stretcher.

  “What the hell is going on?” snapped the voice of the medical examiner.

  “I don’t know, Dr. Thurlow. His hands weren’t like that when we put him on the gurney.”

  Now that he had their attention, Garreth forced open his eyes. Half a dozen gasps sounded around him.

  He focused on Dr. Edmund Thurlow. “Please.” The whisper rasped up his throat with a plea from his soul. “Get me out of here.”

  2

  Why were the doctors out at the intensive care unit desk talking so loud, Garreth wondered. Every patient in the unit could hear them.

  “I tell you he was dead,” Thurlow said. “I detected no vital signs, no heartbeat or respiration, and his pupils were fixed and dilated.”

  “It’s obvious he couldn’t have been dead,” a hospital doctor said. “However, that’s beside the point now. The question is, can we keep him alive? We’re pouring blood and ringers into him as fast as we can but his blood pressure is still almost nonexistent and he’s hypothermic and bradycardic. His breathing is so slow only the monitor tells me he’s breathing.”

  Garreth looked up at the suspended plastic bags, one clear, one with contents the same dark red as Lane Barber’s hair. His eyes followed the tubing down to his arms. The blood made him feel better, but still not good. Exhaustion dragged at him. He desperately wanted to sleep, but could not find a comfortable position, no matter how he shifted and turned.

  “What about the throat injury?” Thurlow said.

  “A few skin sutures are all he’s needed,” came the reply. “The trauma isn’t nearly as severe as you described, Dr. Thurlow.”

  “We have photographs of what I saw.” Thurlow sounded defensive. “Both the left jugular and common carotid suffered multiple lacerations, almost to the point of complete severing. There were also multiple lacerations of the trachea and left stemocleidomastoid muscles.”

  “I’ve seen your photographs, so I believe you...yet twelve hours later the muscles, vessels, and trachea appear intact.”

  They went on talking, but Garreth tried to ignore them. Careful not to move the arm with the needle in it, he shifted position again. The cardiac monitor above his bed registered the effort with an extra bleep. Moving proved pointless, however. Nothing made him comfortable. His bed stood near the window, and the glare of sunlight added to his discomfort.

  Footsteps approached. If it was the nurse, he decided, he would beg for something to drug him to sleep.

  Then he smiled weakly as Harry and Lieutenant Serruto appeared around the curtain across the door.

  “Hi.” he whispered.

  “Mik-san,” Harry replied in a husky voice. His hand closed hard over Garreth’s.

  Serruto said, “They’re letting us ask you a few questions.”

  “Yes. What the hell were you doing up there?” Harry demanded. “I’m your partner. Why don’t you tell me what you’re doing?”

  “Easy, Harry,” Serruto said.

  Garreth did not mind. He heard the frantic worry beneath the anger and knew how he would have felt in Harry’s place. “Sorry.”

  “What happened?” Serruto asked.

  Talking hurt. Garreth tried to find a short answer. Reaching up to the heavy collar of bandages around his throat, he managed to whisper, “Lane Barber bit me.”

  They stared. “She bit you! That’s an understatement. How did it happen?”

  How could he explain the loss of will that allowed her to stand him passively against a wall and tear his throat out? Damn, that light hurt. He shut his eyes. “Please. Close the curtains. Sun’s too bright.”

  “There’s no sun,” Harry said in a tone of surprise. “We’ve been socked in with heavy fog since midnight.”

  Garreth opened his eyes again in astonishment. Noises that sounded overly loud and light that hurt his eyes. Bleeding to death produced one hell of a hangover. But to his relief, Harry closed the curtains. It helped a little.

  “Lane bit Mossman and Adair,” he said with an effort. “Drank their blood.”

  “Christ!” Harry shuddered. “The barmaid thought Barber might be kinky, but she’s really bent.”

  Barmaid? Garreth did not ask the question, but he raised his brows in query.

  Serruto explained. “We went around to the Barbary Now. Harry thought that you might have been there. The barmaid told us what you two talked about.”

  If that were so, Harry must have made the same connections he had. He looked questioningly at Harry.

  Harry sighed, shaking his head, indicating to Garreth that they had not arrested Lane.

  “She’s skipped,” Serruto said. “Caught a plane to be at her mother’s bedside, she told the manager.”

  Harry said, “Something spooked her. When she came to work, she told the manager that she might have to leave suddenly. She’d even arranged for another singer to come in. After her walk with you, she sang a second set, then made a phone call — to her family, she told the manager — and said she had to leave.”

  Garreth’s visit that afternoon spooked her. She saw him taking down the license number of the car. “Search her apartment?”

  They nodded. “Nothing,” Serruto said. “No personal papers in the desk or trash. Some had been burned in the fireplace. The lab is seeing what they can recover from them. Refrigerator and cupboards bare. She left a closet full of clothes. The manager has no idea where her mother might live.”

  A nurse came in. “Lieutenant, that’s enough for now.” When Serruto frowned, she slid between him and the bed and herded both the lieutenant and Harry away.

  Harry called back, “Lien sends her love. She’ll visit as soon as it’s allowed.”

  When they were gone, the nurse moved around the bed, tucking in sheets. “For someone so weak, you’re a restless sleeper.”

  For the first time in his life. “Not comfortable. Sleeping pill?”

  “Absolutely not. We can’t allow anything that depresses body functions.” She leaned across him, pulling up the covers. As she did so, the smell of her filled his nostrils...a pleasant mixture of soap and fabric softener and something with an odd but strangely attractive metallic/salty scent. “How about a back rub. That may help.”

  It did not. The sheets felt hot and sticky every place they touched him, with razor creases. He twisted in vain looking for a cool spot. However futilely he hunted a comfortable position, however, unit of blood reduced his feeling of weakness. The dragging weight of his body lightened and he moved with less effort. A thirst that had persisted all day turned into hunger and he looked forward eagerly to supper. An eagerness evaporating abruptly when he saw the broth, gelatin, and tea they allowed him.

  “I don’t get real food?” He thought longingly of fried rice and Lien’s sweet-and-sour pork.

  “We don’t want to strain your circulation by making it work at digestion.”

  Maybe we did not, but he wished otherwise. Then again, maybe she was right. After eating, his stomach churned uneasily, as though debating whether to keep the offering or not.

  Garreth lay quiet, willing the nausea away. Could this be part of last night, or was it an aftermath of Chiarelli’s punch?

  At length, the nausea subsided...and Garreth discovered he felt much better. Full of new blood and a symbolic meal, he felt surprisingly normal. Though he still needed sleep, he found some of the aches had subsided. He wished he had a TV to watch.

  A doctor appeared later in the evening, introducing himself as Dr. Charles. Garreth recognized the voice from the group at the desk earlier. “You’re looking much better, Inspector. Your blood pressure is steadily improving. Now, let’s check a few other things.”

  He used a stethoscope and rubber hammer and tongue depressor, listening, peering, tapping, probing. While he worked, he hummed. Occasionally the hum changed key, but Garreth could not tell if that had any significance or n
ot. What he did notice was the same metallic/salty odor about the doctor that he had noticed on the nurse. Did they all wear the same antiperspirant or something?

  “You’re doing much better. What you need now is a good night’s sleep, and if you’re doing this well in the morning, we’ll move you out of Intensive Care,” the doctor said. He discontinued the blood and fluids.

  Garreth, however, did not feel the least like sleeping now. He wanted a TV or visitors. Lacking both, he could only lie in bed listening to the heart monitors bleeping in ragged syncopation in the other rooms. He closed his eyes, but opened them again when his mind began replaying the nightmare in the alley. Where had she learned that perversion?

  Why did they keep Intensive Care lighted so brightly at night? he also wondered. How could anyone sleep in a glare like this?

  He lay awake when dawn came, and then, astonishingly, for what must be the first time in his life, the first rays of the sun brought an intense desire to sleep. Only he could not. Just as suddenly, he rediscovered all yesterday’s aches. The sheets heated up and Garreth found himself once more in a ceaseless hunt for a comfortable position. Worse, when breakfast came, his stomach voted against it. It came back up almost before he swallowed.

  On his morning rounds, Dr. Charles frowned gravely at that. Garreth told him about Chiarelli.

  “We’ll schedule for a barium series tomorrow and see about your stomach.”

  In the meantime, they returned to intravenous feeding. After the morning bloodwork, they decided he needed still more blood. He lay with clear liquid running into one arm and blood into the other. He would look like a junkie by the time he got out of here, he reflected.

  The air filled with that metallic/salty scent, stronger than ever. Only this time, with none of the staff around.

  Sniffing out the source, Garreth discovered that it came from the tube feeding blood into his arm.

  The hair on his neck rose. That was what he was smelling, blood? He smelled the blood in people?