Watchers

he had pried out of Hudston. . . if he could figure out who would like to buy it. But knowledge was not only saleable; it was also dangerous. Ask Adam. Ask Eve. If his current employers, the Sexy-voiced lady and the other people in L.A., learned that he had broken the most basic rule of his trade, if they knew that he had interrogated one of his victims before wasting him, they would put out a contract on Vince. The hunter would become the hunted.
    Of course, he didn’t worry a lot about dying. He had too much life stored up in him. Other people’s lives. More lives than ten cats. He was going to live forever. He was pretty sure of that. But . . . well, he didn’t know for certain how many lives he had to absorb in order to insure immortality. Sometimes he felt that he’d already achieved a state of invincibility, eternal life. But at other times, he felt that he was still vulnerable and that he would have to take more life energy into himself before he would reach the desired state of godhood. Until he knew, beyond doubt, that he had arrived at Olympus, it was best to exercise a little caution.
    Banodyne.
    The Francis Project.
    if what Hudston said was true, the risk Vince was taking would be well-rewarded when he found the right buyer for the information. He was going to be a rich man.
     
     
8
    Wes Dalberg had lived alone in a stone cabin in upper Holy Jim Canyon on the eastern edge of Orange County for ten years. His only light came from Coleman lanterns, and the only running water in the place was from a hand pump in the kitchen sink. His toilet was in an outhouse with a quarter-moon carved on the door (as a joke), about a hundred feet from the back of the cabin.
    Wes was forty-two, but he looked older. His face was wind-scoured and sun-leathered. He wore a neatly trimmed beard with a lot of white whiskers. Although he appeared aged beyond his true years, his physical condition was that of a twenty-five-year-old. He believed his good health resulted from living close to nature.
    Tuesday night, May 18, by the silvery light of a hissing Coleman lantern, he sat at the kitchen table until one in the morning, sipping homemade plum wine and reading a McGee novel by John D. MacDonald. Wes was, as he put it, “an antisocial curmudgeon born in the wrong century,” who had little, use for modern society. But he liked to read about McGee because McGee swam in that messy, nasty world out there and never let the murderous currents sweep him away.
    When he finished the book at one o’clock, Wes went outside to get more wood for the fireplace. Wind-swayed branches of sycamores cast vague moonshadows on the ground, and the glossy surfaces of rustling leaves shone dully with pale reflections of the lunar light. Coyotes howled in the distance as they chased down a rabbit or other small creature. Nearby, insects sang in the brush, and a chill wind soughed through the higher reaches of the forest.
    His supply of cordwood was stored in a lean-to that extended along the entire north side of the cabin. He pulled the latch-peg out of the hasp on the double doors. He was so familiar with the arrangement of the wood in the storage space that he worked blindly in its lightless confines, filling a sturdy tin hod with half a dozen logs. He carried the hod out in both hands, put it down, and turned to close the doors.
    He realized the coyotes and the insects had all fallen silent. Only the wind still had a voice.
    Frowning, he turned to look at the dark forest that encircled the small clearing in which his cabin stood.
    Something growled.
    Wes squinted at the night-swaddled woods, which suddenly seemed less well illuminated by the moon than they had been a moment ago.
    The growling was deep and angry. Not like anything he had heard out there before in ten years of nights alone.
    Wes was curious, even concerned, but not afraid. He stood very still, listening. A minute ticked by, and he heard nothing further.
    He finished closing the lean-to doors, pegged the latch, and picked up the hod full of cordwood.
    Growling again. Then silence. Then the sound of dry brush and leaves crackling, crunching, snapping underfoot.
    Judging by the sound, it was about thirty yards away. Just a bit west of the outhouse. Back in the forest.
    The thing grumbled again, louder this time. Closer, too. Not more than twenty yards away now.
    He could still not see the source of the sound. The deserter moon continued to hide behind a narrow filigree band of