Lover Beware

her spine like icy fingers, stopping her in her tracks, breath held in her lungs, heart banging in her ears.
    She hadn’t honed her talent well enough to predict catastrophe before it happened. But she had been disabused of the idea that destiny was an entity that shouldn’t be fucked around with. It wasn’t destiny that chose some poor schmuck to have his head blown away in a drive-by shooting. Destiny was not being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Such destiny was death by evil. God simply blinked, and in that infinitesimal moment Satan himself snapped his fingers and obliterated a soul.
    However, she had, over the last years, learned to recognize the foul stench of impending evil—but only when she focused on it. Not easy. A little like a one-hundred-pound weight lifter attempting to heave a five-hundred-pound barbell.
    But tonight, the stench drifted to her as vaporous as the fog slithering through the streets. As filthy as the dark brown river slapping against the piers.
    Donovan and Armstrong, Costos and Killroy might well entrap Angel Gonzales with their decoy whores. But the French Quarter monster was on the hunt again. She could feel his presence. It crawled over her skin like the fine point of his weapon.
    She moved silently along Pauline to the alley that led to Bobbie Cox’s apartment. With any luck, and no disturbances, she just might be able to grasp enough of the dreadful event to help the case. The police tape had long ago been removed. There remained no evidence whatsoever that a brutal murder had transpired here days ago. Life goes on…and on…and on….
    But not for Bobbie or J.D. Damascus’s family.
    She instinctively reached for her gun—reassuring to know it was there as she breathed in the tainted scent of sour beer and urine and him as she moved down the dark alley toward Bobbie’s apartment. She already dreaded the coming experience. Feared the horror. The pain. The spiraling of the soul leaving the twitching mutilated body of a human being.
    Pausing.
    Anna narrowed her eyes, the rise of heat through her body causing sweat to pool in her armpits and run down her ribs.
     
    SHE IS QUITE beautiful, he thinks. Always thought so. Hard not to appraise Anna Travelli and not get a hard-on. Therein is the problem. The others had not interested him in that way. He would never fuck a whore. Cut off their heads, yes. But fuck them, no.
    He stays close to the shuttered buildings, where the moonlight cannot reach. The light of the moon stirs his blood, and his hunger. He can smell her perfume. Nothing floral for this one. It is the feel of feminine masculinity about her that intrigues him. She would not scream and beg for her life. She would fight him as powerfully as a man. She might even kill him.
    A tantalizing thought. Someone really should kill him. His soul is more than worthy of Hell.
    And so he follows, creeps around the edge of what once had been an old mill house and presses his body hard against the aged, sharp bricks. Watches as she pauses, reaching for the gun in the shoulder holster beneath her lightweight jacket. She senses him. He can tell.
    Her head turns slowly and she looks back down the alley. He stands very still, not breathing, simply admiring the reflection of moonlight on her face and hair that shimmers like fiery gold.
    Again she moves, nearing the whore’s apartment. He wonders why she has come here, alone. In the dark. What does she expect to find here that the police have been unable to locate?
    She steps around a corner, disappearing from his sight. Taking a deep breath, he slowly releases it, and follows.
     
    IT WAS THE sudden overwhelming sense of menace that made Anna grab again for her gun. Foolish of her to have ignored her own perceptions. They had screamed at her like a thousand sirens the moment she’d stepped from the car.
    As he moved up behind her, she drove her elbow hard into the pit of his stomach, slammed her heel down as hard as she could on his foot. The animal-like howl erupted in her ear, but his hands continued to claw into the flesh of her throat, cutting off her breath as she struggled to shift her body enough to aim the gun—impossible.
    She fired the Glock anyway, heard the bullet ricochet off the metal roof of a building, a ping and whine that echoed up the alleyway. The shock of the gunfire momentarily startled her assailant enough that she was able to throw her head back, ramming it into his chin with such impact she heard his