Mongrel [bxb] | Bad Moon Book III

Chapter 20: ravens and moths

Thomas Neely drove seventy-an-hour against the wind, the gushing heartbeat of an empty interstate breathing life into his lungs and fire into his belly.

It was a good night to kill a man.

The old shotgun he'd brought along sat strapped in the passenger seat, a precious, glass-boned baby, wrapped in a leather pelt. Her case was worn and frayed on the edge and ruffling into the wind.

A gun like this could take a wolf's head off. Most certainly, most certainly.

Don't make me a killer, the kid screamed inside him. His body reacted to the sound like a child to a mother's coo. Raven's heart doubled and he tightened his fists around the wheel to reign in the shell he'd taken as his own. He was in control. Kid wouldn't kick him out, not yet. Not until he purged the world. Not until he gave it a little shining.

God did he miss it.

Children and animals—those were the purest of God's creations. Put on this earth with no ill-intention beyond the natural nip of survival—and even then, one couldn't draw blood with fresh-cut teeth. They were the only things in this world that were truly good, and so he was good back to them, the way God willed him to be. He'd always been good with animals, Thomas. Not so good with kids, but they were pure all the same. He'd never hurt them—never. But as he grew, strange, fascinating urges bloomed in him. Violent, terrible little monsters.

He developed a fond fascination for true crime, murderous documentaries, menacing faces in the morning papers. He printed them to mind and brought them back in mid-lecture daydreams. A knife in the eye of a homicide suspect from Seattle. Hands around the throat of a kidnapper, suspected of sex-ring involvement. The burning flesh of a Klansman who'd murdered a mixed-race couple in Kentucky. He imagined their deaths fondly, but he didn't know what it was to kill back then.

Thomas Neely only knew that he wanted to.

Don't make me a killer, the kid said again.

This time, Raven replied, "I'm the one doing the killing."

Saying it aloud lit a desperate feeling in his chest. Raven eased on the gas pedal. Seventy-five...seventy-eight...eighty. He was a sick man and he knew it too well. He wanted to hear the bones crepitated beneath his bullets. He wanted to smell the blood.

Hurry.

"Hurry?" Asked Raven. "Thought you didn't want me to do this?" A wash of black swooped beside the Jeep and careened beneath an overpass, sailing up into the night sky. The crows.

I didn't. I don't. I do.

I want him back.

"Then I'll ask you again. Is he worth killing for?"

Yes.

Raven snapped up his blinker, sheerly out of habit, and road up the slow inclining exit. The kid knew these streets—he must've, because somehow, Raven didn't need directions. A left here. A right at the bike shop. A straight line for three miles and a sharp left through oncoming traffic.

The roads were empty and the air was crisp. Frogs sang him ribbits of a sweet hello as he pulled off onto a gravel road at a large, city-side pub. The kinda dive bar folks hit up when they could spare eight bucks for a beer. The kinda folks with flashy cars and enough good looks to leave with other folks who could spare eight bucks for a beer. The parking lot was empty, though. The neon closed sign glowing red and menacing in the window.

If the rogue was really here, the place must've been rented out for the evening.

"I should've dressed up," said Raven, lifting the sizable gun from its case and slotting shells into its chamber. Three would have to do. In any ordinary case, three was always enough.