By the light of the moon

carved stone except for the reflections of
firelight that flickered from ear to ear and chin to brow. Their
eyes glittered darkly, and though they tracked the Expedition as it
departed, none demanded that it halt; none gave pursuit.
    Their hard-chased prey had been brought down. The lunatic doctor
had perished in the Cadillac, evidently before they could capture
and question him. With him must have been consumed what he referred
to as his life's work, as well as all evidence that vials of his
mysterious stuff were missing. For now this posse or pack
– or whatever these men were – believed that the hunt
had reached a successful conclusion. If fortune favored Dylan, they
would never learn otherwise, and he would be spared a bullet in the
head.
    He slowed the SUV, then brought it to a full stop, gawking with
obvious morbid curiosity at the blazing car. Proceeding without
pause might have seemed suspicious.
    Beside him, Jilly understood the strategy of his hesitant
departure. 'It's hard to play the ghoul when you know the
victim.'
    'We didn't know him, and just a couple minutes ago, you
called him a sack of excrement.'
    'He's not the victim I'm talking about. I'm glad that smiley
bastard's dead. I'm talking about the love of my life, my beautiful
midnight-blue Coupe DeVille.'
    For a moment, some of the make-believe golfers watched Dylan and
Jilly goggling at the burning wreckage. God knew what they might
make of Shepherd, who sat in the backseat with his hands still
flattened atop his head, as disinterested in the fire as in
everything else beyond his own skin. When the men turned away from
the Expedition, dismissing its driver and passengers as the usual
crash-scene oafs, Dylan took his foot off the brake and moved
on.
    At the end of the exit lane lay the street across which he had
ventured not an hour ago to purchase cheeseburgers and French
fries, heart disease on the installment plan. Though he'd never had
a chance to eat that dinner.
    He turned right on the street and headed toward the freeway as
the caterwaul of sirens rose in the distance. He didn't speed.
    'What're we going to do?' Jillian Jackson asked.
    'Get away from here.'
    'And then?'
    'Get farther away from here.'
    'We can't just run forever. Especially when we don't know who or
what we're running from – or why.'
    Her observation contained too much truth and common sense to
allow argument, and as Dylan searched for a reply, he found that
he'd become as verbally challenged as she believed all artists
were.
    Behind Dylan, as they reached the ramp to the interstate, his
brother whispered, 'By the light of the moon.'
    Shepherd breathed those words only once, which was a relief,
considering his penchant for repetition, but then he began to cry.
Shep was not a weepy kid. He had wept seldom in the past seventeen
years, since he'd been a child of three, when his retreat from the
pains and disappointments of this world had become all but
complete, since he had begun to live most of each day in a safer
world of his own creation. Yet now: tears twice in one night.
    He didn't shriek or wail, but cried quietly: thick sobs twined
with thin mewling, sounds of misery swallowed before they were
fully expressed. Although he labored to stifle his emotion, Shep
could not entirely conceal the terrible power of it. Some
unknowable grief or anguish racked him. As revealed by the rearview
mirror, his usually placid countenance – under his hat of
stacked hands, framed by his elbows – was wrenched by a
torment as disturbing as that on the face in Edvard Munch's famous
painting, The Scream .
    'What's wrong with him?' Jilly asked as they arrived at the top
of the ramp.
    'I don't know.' Dylan worriedly shifted his attention between
the road ahead and the mirror. 'I don't know.'
    As though melting, Shepherd's hands slid slowly from the top of
his head, down his temples, but firmed up again, hardening into
fists just below his ears. He ground his knuckles against his
cheekbones, as though he were resisting a fearsome inner pressure
that threatened to fracture his facial structure, stretch his
flesh, and forever balloon his features into a freak-show face.
    'Dear God, I don't know,' Dylan repeated, aware of the tremor of
distress in his voice as he transitioned from the entrance ramp
onto the first eastbound lane of the interstate.
    Traffic, all of it faster than the Expedition, raced through the
Arizona night toward New Mexico. Distracted by his brother's
whimpers and groans of