Darkfall

the beef, then a large tomato.
    She opened two cans of soup.
    From the refrigerator, he got pickles, mustard, mayonnaise, and two kinds of cheese. The bread was in the breadbox.
    He turned to Rebecca to ask how she wanted her sandwich.
    She was standing at the stove with her back to him, stirring the soup in the pot. Her hair shimmered softly against her dark blue robe.
    Jack felt a tremor of desire. He marveled at how very different she was now from the way she had been when he’d last seen her at the office, only an hour ago. No longer the ice maiden. No longer the Viking woman. She looked smaller, not particularly shorter but narrower of shoulder, slimmer of wrist, overall more slender, more fragile, more girlish than she had seemed earlier.
    Before he realized what he was doing, he moved toward her, stepped up behind her, and put his hands on her shoulders.
    She wasn’t startled. She had sensed him coming. Perhaps she had even willed him to come to her.
    At first her shoulders were stiff beneath his hands, her entire body rigid.
    He pulled her hair aside and kissed her neck, made a chain of kisses along the smooth, sweet skin.
    She relaxed, softened, leaned back against him.
    He slid his hands down her sides, to the swell of her hips.
    She sighed but said nothing.
    He kissed her ear.
    He slid one hand up, cupped her breast.
    She switched off the gas burner on which the pot of minestrone was heating.
    His arms were around her now, both hands on her flat belly.
    He leaned over her shoulder, kissed the side of her throat. Through his lips, pressed to her supple flesh, he felt one of her arteries throb with her strong pulse; a rapid pulse; faster now and faster still.
    She seemed to melt back into him.
    No woman, except his lost wife, had ever felt this warm to him.
    She pressed her bottom against him.
    He was so hard he ached.
    She murmured wordlessly, a feline sound.
    His hands would not remain still but moved over her in gentle, lazy exploration.
    She turned to him.
    They kissed.
    Her hot tongue was quick, but the kiss was long and slow.
    When they broke, drawing back only inches, to take a much-needed breath, their eyes met, and hers were such a fiercely bright shade of green that they didn’t seem real, yet he saw a very real longing in them.
    Another kiss. This one was harder than the first, hungrier.
    Then she pulled back from him. Took his hand in hers.
    They walked out of the kitchen. Into the living room.
    The bedroom.
    She switched on a small lamp with an amber glass shade. It wasn’t bright. The shadows retreated slightly but didn’t go away.
    She took off her robe. She wasn’t wearing anything else.
    She looked as if she were made of honey and butter and cream.
    She undressed him.
    Many minutes later, on the bed, when he finally entered her, he said her name with a small gasp of wonder, and she said his. Those were the first words they had spoken since he had put his hands on her shoulders, out in the kitchen.
    They found a soft, silken, satisfying rhythm and gave pleasure to each other on the cool, crisp sheets.
    VI
    Lavelle sat at the kitchen table, staring at the radio.
    Wind shook the old house.
    To the unseen presence using the radio as a contact point with this world, Lavelle said, “Should I have his children murdered now, tonight, without further delay?”
    “Yessss.”
    “But if I kill his children, isn’t there a danger that Dawson will be more determined than ever to find me?”
    “Kill them.”
    “Do you mean killing them might break Dawson?”
    “Yessss.”
    “Contribute to an emotional or mental collapse?”
    “Yessss.”
    “Destroy him?”
    “Yessss.”
    “There is no doubt about that?”
    “He lovessss them very muchhhh.”
    “And there’s no doubt what it would do to him?” Lavelle pressed.
    “Kill them.”
    “I want to be sure.”
    “Kill them. Brutally. It musssst be esssspecccially brutal.”
    “I see. The brutality of it is the thing that will make Dawson snap. Is that it?”
    “Yessss.”
    “I’ll do anything to get him out of my way, but I want to be absolutely sure it’ll work the way I want it to work.”
    “Kill them. Ssssmasssh them. Break their bonessss and tear out their eyessss. Rip out their tonguessss. Gut them assss if they were two pigssss for butchhhhering.”
    VII
    Rebecca’s bedroom.
    Spicules of snow tapped softly on the window.
    They lay on their backs, side by side on the bed, holding hands, in the butterscotch-colored