CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THE ANGEL OF DESOLATION

man grinned as he watched Alison Chandler drive off.

Angel will find you, Angel knows where you sleep at night, knows you leep naked, knows you sleep with him who denies his true nature, his calling.

He licked his lips; his stomach growled. He needed the blood and sometimes even the fatty tissue to survive. He had lived off fat during ii most of his time with his mistress. But this city, alive, so very alive with of blood.

Hungry. Need some, some warmth, some.... Love.

There was a house, the one he'd been staying in, whose owners had fled sometime back. Fire had damaged the kitchen and dining room, but that had not kept the runaways from invading it and sleeping on its bare floors, covered with newspapers for warmth. The windows had been broken, and the kids had taped cardboard from boxes up against them--it was always dark there. And the basement. It was the perfect place for him to sleep, absolute darkness, darkness where he would find her, and warmth, so much warmth from their young bodies pressed up against his while he slept, for they, too, were night creatures.

He had had to kill a few of them, the temptation had been so : How much better were living and breathing bodies than those were already dead.

He felt stirrings in his loins when he thought of the children, sleeping with him in that house. How they looked up to I or feared him, for it was all the same; and he held them when l shivered from withdrawal, or kissed them when their veins burned the liquid fire of heroin they kept there.

And they came to him, they saw in him their release into The night was like the voice of his mistress, warm skin. He felt his heart beating faster. He tried could've taken her, right then. Alison. They had been on the frequency for those precious seconds, and he thought he'd skin ripping. Heart beating too fast. He brought his hands up chest and felt the pulse of his life. Those who betrayed, he promised come home. Getting into the car he'd stolen, he closed his eyes, of her.

Then, he opened his eyes, glancing into the backseat where i dead woman lay. She had provided him with sustenance. But needed more. He needed to bring home all the children who abandoned their beloved.

His beloved.

He turned the key in the ignition. He loved all the children world.

All those who had once been children, all who would children, all who had betrayed him.

His love was savage and endless.

Alison and Peter, he grinned. Alison and Peter. My fkiends. The night, the smells. Beckoning.

The thought of juice in the back of his throat, burning and He had to go find sustenance, the fatty tissue and the skin and blood, all would give him strength to bring the children home

Within an hour, on a dark street in downtown Los Angeles, a woman behind a dumpster, and he leaned over her, feeding. The of the bank building behind him had a stain from a tower of blood 'had shot up as if to the sky Before three a.m." three teenagers's bodies would be found torn as if dogs-By sunrise, the police would already be gathered around what looked the most brutal slaying since the Black Dahlia murder in the 1940s, woman with red hair, her skin all but stripped from her bones, and teeth marks deep into torso Dawn would be coming--he could smell it in the sky, in the chill was burning off.

Still he was un sated

He was tired, but the drive was still there: he wanted to find her, the the right girl, who could take away the nightmares of that empty inside him, the girl whom She could come into, could possess for one moment between life and death. The freshness of flesh.

The driving force within him would be his appetite.

TwenTy-Two

THE TRIALS OF MARRIAGE

lison slid into bed, and whenever she did it, she knew Peter would p.

She hated waking him up. Peter was always so sweet asleep, calm.

Sometimes, the nightmares, sure. But not all the time. Not of the time. How can you love somebody so much and lie to them?

could answer so few of her own questions in life. She felt sticky sweat and freezing cold; she pulled the sheet up around her "You awake?"

"I guess I am now." As he said this, she saw the shadow of his arm for the bedside lamp, hesitate, and then drop down to the "How was class?"

Her eyes adjusted to the dark. She couldn't tell if his eyes were opened His voice was strange, like he'd been lying in bed pretending for her benefit. He didn't sound sleepy. Maybe he suspects. Jesus, he going to say when he finds out I've been seeing Correa? Her head echoed a hammer beating down on a spike. Four little Advils later of cheap wine3%m theidge, and it keeps on ticking.

th? He said.

The head-banging continued unabated, and she began to worry that she would start screaming at him for no reason at all. Like full year of periods at once. The palm of his hand rested on her his hand was like ice.

"You're burning up."

She tried to sound fine. "Peter." She reached over and hair up. "Just a touch of fever. Maybe I should sleep on the you don't catch anything. Maybe it's the flu." "No, stay here, okay?" "I'm all achy."

He wrapped his arms around her. It made her feel

"If it's the flu .... "

"No, I was kidding, I'm fine. I'm just overheated. Like a car.

studying so hard it made my brain hurt, if you can believe it. I take a bath," she said, disentangling herself from his arms. "You I'll be in later. Oh, damn and double damn," she said, rising, off the sheet.

"I forgot to take my contacts out. God, I was so today, I always end up keeping you up, and you've got to get early." She was almost in tears from the pain and she know it, because she wouldn't have an explanation. Walking carpet barefoot seemed like stepping on nails. It was the was the damn wall in her mind, making every part of her go as if she were all nerve endings.

"No problem--I wasn't really asleep anyway, ...... the light. His dirty blond hair hung over his eyes. He watched her i mirror as she set her contacts in solution. "How was work?"

She sighed. Work was years ago in the morning, before with Diego.

Handling cats and dogs. "Same old same old. Had put a sixteen-year-old spaniel to sleep, and I couldn't stop that stupid. You work with animals, it's what happens.

He didn't reply.

In the bathroom, Alison turned the water on in the tub as hot as she et it. The bathroom was steamed up when she finally got under water.

She sat down in the tub and let the hot water pour over her. it felt right.

The hooded man on the other side of the chain link fence at the parking The headache. The blackout. The nosebleed. The worst part of g it was that it wasn't an awful feeling. It was a feeling of alive. Not being made of stone. She closed her eyes and inhaled the steam of the bath.

She saw: a boy, dark-haired and handsome, a teenager, tried to open but they were sewn shut, 'Alison?" The boy asked, and then another screamed, "ALISON? HELP ME! ALISON OH MY GOD, IT'S IN

IT'S COMING FOR ME! ALISON? HELP ME JESUS GOD

ME DON'T LEAVEME!"And then the boy who her said, "don't cry, it's a dream you're having, a bad dream, it's real, I don't hear anything, honest to god, you don't have to hear it,

"and he brought his fist down to the side of her face. And she turned look away, but she didn't feel anything, he didn't hit her, after all.

Her

* but it didn't hurt, and she saw a wall. Bright lights like of lightning. She was moving fast, crying out, "Morn! Where are you?

was seeing the walls move, walls covered with amed pictures, windows that looked out on crosses, and shining table tops pushed the walls. The dark stain outline of a human being, a woman, Alison turned her head back to the boy and opened her eyes and

"Charlie?"

She heard water splashing and felt heat and saw fog.

She was in the tub. The steam cleared.

71dl? Peter asked from the doorway.

Alison saw the bathroom door opening. Hands parted the glass partition. Peter stood there in his white jockey shorts, tall and lanky a shy farm boy. His ribs stuck out he wasn't eating enough; he weary.

"I couldn't get back to sleep," he said. He reached down and his underwear off, kicking it across the bathroom floor. He had line up to his thighs, and another just below his navel. "Mind if I you in the waterfall?"

Hanging onto the metal soap carrier and one side of the tub, he in alongside her, facing her. He grasped the white soap and along her neck and shoulders. He leaned over, stretching his jaw moving forward to kiss her; her shoulders slumped; she towards him, kissing him. His lips and tongue were smooth and felt, in the spray, as if she had never been touched before. She hands slip down along her breasts, sliding along her ribs; he nestled i her; she leaned back, raising herself up slightly as she groped with feet around his waist until she had her knees pressed against his her feet flat on the warm tub floor behind him. She rubbed soap his chest and nipples, tickling his belly slightly, curling her fingers the hair on his stomach, plucking it back. "Al, All, Alison," he kissing her chin, her cheeks, her ear, the back of her neck as he closer to her. They fit together with difficulty; like two pieces puzzles. Making love always involved a level of tension and before the pleasure kicked in, even after all these years--I

fit together, just when he entered her, it would take her so long time to enjoy it, she would try meeting him with each thrust, but herself pulling back, sliding along the tub floor. Why were things easier in the imagination than in the act of doing? Why did the always seem to get in the way with Peter? It had taken twelve times Peter before she'd even started enjoying it, but she thought that normal. She'd been a teenager then. The idea of having this large inside you while you positioned yourself at this awkward angle, way you'd been told all your life was somehow bad and not what people did, while this boy seemed to be jabbing all over the were wishing he'd just lie still for a few moments so you could some, while all your life you'd been taught that no one should upper hand with you, and here you were fulfilling a natural calling, and it involved penetration of your body: well, she hadn't epected the first few times to be fun and games, there was too much baggage attached with it. But after all these years together. Loving each other so much.

Knowing so much about each other .... Always, with Peter, she felt it wasn't her he desired, but some other girl, and the blockade came not from within Alison's body, but from Peter's, as if he were holding something back when he entered her, keeping something for that other gift. He curled his mouth slightly when he was inside her, and she always expected him to call out for someone. For her. The girl of his dreams.

When Peter entered her here, on the tub floor, her hands reached behind him, her fingers stroking the light hair on his back; pressing, she tried to bring him all the way into her so there was no difference between their bodies.

But as she felt his thrusts become more rapid, as she pressed her head into his neck, her lips against his chin, as she felt something within herself Spark like a live wire thrown into the tub with them, she was again with some teenaged boy whose mouth and tongue were everywhere across her pale skin, rough and dry and unrelenting. And he pressed her up against a stained wall.