Vengeance. Mystery Writers of America Presents B00A25NLU4

hopes you’re proud.
    But right now he just hopes you’re ready. That he’s ready. He’s dreamed of this so often down the years between then and now that he feels suddenly unprepared, naked in the dark.
    Shivering, he’s a seven-year-old boy again, with all the majesty fresh ripped out of him, howling as he’s punished for truth, punished for faith.
    Punished for believing, when you told him you would take very special care of him indeed.
    He’s punished himself and those around him ever since. Lived a life stripped to base essentials, where “refinement” means cut with stuff that’s only going to kill you slow.
    Lost.
    And now he’s found you again, and he thinks, if he does this right, he may find himself again too.
    He hears the footsteps, familiar even loaded by the drag and stagger of the years. He folds his hand tighter around the knife, takes in the sodden air, feels the pulse-beat in his fingertips.
    Feels alive.
    It’s a privilege only one of you can share.
    Attuned, he sees your figure sway into the open mouth of the alley, hesitating at the unexpected gloom. A stumble, a smothered curse, but he knows you won’t play it safe. You never have. Going the longer way around will take time, and you’re loath to be away from your latest pet project, whoever that might be.
    He wonders if he will be in time to save them — not from what’s been but from what’s to come — even as he steps out of the recess, a wraith in the shadows, the knife unsheathed now and eager for the bite.
    At the last moment you hear his lunge of breath and you begin to turn. Too slow.
    He is on you, fast with the lust of it, strong with the manifestation of his own fear. His hand grasps your forehead, tilting your head back for the sacrifice. Is it instinct that tries to force your chin under, or do you know what’s coming?
    Too slow.
    He can smell soap overlaying sweat and tobacco, the garlic of your last meal. Garlic that failed to keep this vampire at bay.
    The knife, sharp as a butcher’s blade, makes a first pass across your stringy throat. It slips so easily through the skin that for a moment he almost believes you are the demon of his childhood nightmares, to be slain by no mortal hand.
    Then he remembers a laughing boast — that the first cut is for free.
    The second cut, though, is all for himself.
    He goes in deep, hacks blind through muscle, tube, and sinew, glances across bone. The blood that gushes outward now is hot, so hot he can almost hear it sizzle.
    Your legs run out on you. Shock puts you down and sheer disbelief keeps you there. He steps back, hollowed out by the skill, watches your eyes as the realization finally sets in.
Your heart still pumps but you are dead, even if you don’t know it yet.
    He expected a fierce joy. He feels only silence.
    He turns his back, not waiting for your feeble struggles to subside, and walks away. At the mouth of the alley he drops the knife into a drain, and walks away.
    The rain starts up again, like it’s been waiting, like it’s been holding its breath.

    T HE RAIN CLEANSES him. His feet take him past the gang tags, the articulation of alienation that forms the melody of his daily life, to the crumbling church. Not the same church, but another very like it. They have all become one to him — a place of undue reverence. A place where he was found and lost, and maybe found again.
    A penance. And now a place of twisted sanctuary.
    Approaching the altar, he makes jerky obeisance, slides into the second row. The wood is polished smooth by long passage of the tired and the hopeful. And the building smells of incense and velvet, wax dripped on silver, and the pages of old books lined with dusty words.
    Still damp from the rain, he finds no warmth here.
    Still restless from the act, he finds no comfort.
    He wonders if he was expecting to.
    You first came upon him sitting alone like this, all those years ago, scuffed and crying, pockets emptied and pride stolen. You comforted him then. He remembers a pathetic gratitude.
Salvation.
    The blood rises fast in him. His hands are clasped as if for prayer, the knuckles straining to release a plethora of fury and regret.
    There was no release then. He had nowhere to take it other than the river, was so close to letting go when strangers wrestled him, a child demented, from the railing’s edge. They were shocked at his vehemence, his determination.
    They brought him back to you.
    And you smiled as you told him suicide was the