Even with the industrial-sized fan blowing, it was hot as hell inside the garage of Big Lou’s Gas Up & Go.
Lucas Moore was under the hood of Jeb Dolahyde’s old Ford truck, using a ratchet wrench to tighten the spark plugs he’d just installed. He could feel trickles of sweat tickling the scalp of his shaggy head, eventually dripping down to and across the bridge of his nose. It was days like this when he wished he had the courage to get a crew cut, to shave it all off, but the ladies seemed to like his untamed, curly black hair.
And what the ladies liked, he kept.
He stood up and pulled a red bandanna from his back pocket, wiping the sweat from his face. All he had to do was change the fluids and he’d be done with the first car of the day, leaving only five more to go.
His head pounded and his stomach was becoming increasingly sour. He knew he should probably have something to eat, but the thought only made him queasy. Lucas wanted to blame his misery on the blazing Arizona heat, but he knew it was more likely the beer and whiskey shots from the night before.
He headed to the workstation in the corner of the garage, stopping in front of the fan and closing his eyes. The warm air didn’t provide much in the way of relief, but it was better than nothing.
Head throbbing, he pulled himself away from the fan and dropped the wrench on the workbench. His stomach burbled, and again he considered getting something to eat at the diner across the way, but then he realized that would mean seeing his mother, and he thought better of it.
He flashed back to earlier that morning when his mother had been preparing to leave for work at the Good Eats Diner (also owned by Big Lou). She had started to lay into Lucas about how he had come in drunk, and how he wasn’t even old enough to be drinking, and pretty soon that had led into how he wasn’t doing anything with his life, and how he would never amount to anything without a high school education.
The fact that Lucas had dropped out of high school earlier that year was a real sore spot for his mom, but Lucas saw it as looking at things realistically. He believed high school wasn’t going to teach him anything that was going to help him much in life, especially when he more or less knew he was going to end up fixing cars in Big Lou’s garage anyway.
Dropping out of school had just helped him on his way to an inevitable career path. But try telling his mother that.
He was walking over to a display of radiator fluid when he heard his name called.
Lucas turned to see Richie Dennison and two of his punk friends, Teddy Shay and Vincent Clark, saunter into the garage.
“What can I do for you, Richie?” Lucas asked, taking a plastic container of radiator fluid over to the pickup.
“I told you last night it wasn’t over,” Richie said. He stood with his hands out to either side, like a gunfighter ready to draw.
Lucas’s head immediately began to throb harder. “What wasn’t over?” he asked, setting the container of coolant down in front of the truck and approaching the three.
“You know what I’m talking about,” Richie snarled. “Playing stupid isn’t going to help you.”
Seeing Richie had begun to stir up some memories from the night before, but they were buried pretty deep. Lucas vaguely recalled making a comment about Richie’s girlfriend. “This doesn’t have anything to do with something I said about Brenda, does it?” he asked.
“I told you never to say her name to me again!” Richie shouted, coming at Lucas with his fists clenched.
Lucas backed up, throwing his hands in the air. “Hey, look, I’m sorry, all right? I don’t even remember what I said. But I’m sorry. Okay?”
Richie smirked and his friends chuckled.
“Figured you’d try to get out of it once your buddies weren’t around to back you up,” he said.
“Look,” Lucas began, “I don’t remember much about last night. … I guess I was a little drunk.”
“Not too drunk to run your mouth and talk trash about my girlfriend,” Richie replied.
Lucas thought for sure he was going to throw up. The heat and his hangover were making him feel sicker by the second. “What do you want from me?” he finally asked, trying to keep the annoyance out of his tone. “I said I was sorry. I shouldn’t have talked trash about Brenda.”
Richie moved more quickly than Lucas expected, slamming a fist into his jaw and sending him stumbling to one side.
But he didn’t go down.
“I told you not to say her name,” Richie said menacingly.
Lucas held the side of his face. “I think it’s time for you all to get the hell out of here,” he said, jaw throbbing.
He knew he’d been wrong the night before, even though he couldn’t remember exactly what he’d said. He did have a tendency to run his mouth after a few beers, and probably deserved that punch.
But no more.
“We’ll get out, all right,” Richie said as he and his buddies came at Lucas. “Just as soon as we’re done stomping your ass.”
Lucas liked a good scuffle as much as the next guy, but three against one? That just wasn’t right.
He ducked his head low and charged. Teddy tried to hold Lucas’s arms behind his back, but Lucas drove the heel of his heavy work boot down onto Teddy’s sneakered foot. The kid screamed, limping backward, giving Lucas a chance to concentrate on the other two.
Vincent knocked him back with a punch that grazed his cheek, but it gave Lucas the opportunity he needed. He dove at the guy, grabbing him around the waist and bringing him down to the ground. He pinned Vincent to the floor and put everything he had into a punch to the kidneys.
Richie threw his arms around Lucas’s thick, muscular neck, pulling him from his friend, who now writhed on the floor, moaning. Lucas jabbed his elbow back into Richie’s stomach, loosening Richie’s grip enough that Lucas was able to turn and throw a right cross into the guy’s face, sending him sprawling to the floor.
Breathing heavily, Lucas stood unsteadily as he watched Teddy help Vincent up from the floor. Both eyed him cautiously.
“Get out,” Lucas said, spitting a wad of bloody saliva onto the concrete floor.
They didn’t move, waiting as their ringleader got to his feet.
“Don’t make me tell you again,” Lucas warned. He really wasn’t ready for round two, but he didn’t think the three of them had it in them either.
“This isn’t over,” Richie said, his back to Lucas.
What happened next was a blur.
Lucas thought the boy was leaving, but Richie spun around. Something glinted in the glow of the fluorescent lights as he surged toward Lucas. Lucas tried to block the thrust, but he wasn’t fast enough, and suddenly there was an explosion of pain, followed by a cold numbness in his stomach.
Lucas looked down at himself as Richie stepped back. He could see the new hole in his T-shirt, a scarlet stain starting to expand around it.
“What did you do?” Lucas asked, horror beginning to sink in.
He looked up to see the three wearing expressions of shock as they started to back toward the garage exit. Richie was still holding the blood-speckled knife in his hand.
Jeb Dolahyde appeared in the entrance just then, his ample belly making it around the corner before the rest of him. He was taking the plastic wrapping off a pack of discount cigarettes but stopped short when he noticed Richie and then Lucas across the room.
“What the hell …”
The punks bolted from the garage.
Lucas could smell the blood from his wound. He stared at the scarlet blossom on the belly of his T-shirt until his eyes began to blur. For some reason it no longer hurt as much as it had, and he knew that had to be a bad thing.
“Lucas?” Jeb called to him, his cowboy boots clicking across the concrete floor.
Lucas continued to stare at the stain on his shirt, afraid to look beneath the fabric. Outside he heard the screeching of tires as Richie and his friends fled.
“Lucas, you all right?” he heard Jeb ask. “Do you need me to call 911?”
Lucas didn’t answer. He was distracted by the fact that he could no longer feel any pain. Gathering his courage, he grabbed hold of his bloody shirt and lifted it. His exposed stomach was smeared and sticky with blood, but no matter how hard he searched, he couldn’t find the wound.
With a tentative hand he reached down and began to feel around, expecting a lightning bolt of pain that never came.
There was nothing there.
“No,” he said finally, looking up into the concerned face of Jeb Dolahyde. “It … it looks worse than it is.”
It was like he hadn’t been stabbed at all.
It was a good thing Lucas kept a spare shirt in the back of his truck. He threw the bloodstained T-shirt into one of the barrels inside the garage.
He quickly returned to the job of finishing Jeb’s truck.
Jeb hovered for a while, asking a lot of questions about what had happened, but he finally gave up and went outside when it became clear that Lucas wasn’t giving any answers. It wasn’t that Lucas was intentionally being rude; it was just that he really couldn’t explain it. No matter how hard he thought about it, he always came up with the same answer.
Richie Dennison had stabbed him.
But if that was the case, why wasn’t he hurt?
Lucas threw himself into the job, changing the radiator coolant, then topping off the fluids for the wipers and the brakes. And all the while, the questions kept right on coming.
It wasn’t that he hadn’t been hurt. He’d been hurt, all right. He’d felt the blade go in—it was one of the most painful things he’d ever experienced. And he’d bled like a stuck pig, too.
But in the time it took Jeb to come into the garage, something had happened.
Lucas cleaned up and tossed the trash into the barrel. He saw his bloody T-shirt among the discarded air filters and auto-parts packaging.
Pulling his eyes away, he went outside to find Jeb.
At first he didn’t see Jeb anywhere, but then he caught sight of the large man ambling across the parking lot of the Good Eats diner with an iced coffee.
“Truck’s all set,” Lucas called out, wiping his hands on the bandanna from his back pocket.
“Good job,” the man said, eyeing him curiously. “You sure you’re all right? That was a helluva lot of blood.”
Lucas forced a smile. “I’m fine. Think I just got a good scrape when me and Richie were fighting. You know how those things bleed.”
Jeb nodded, but Lucas could see he really didn’t understand. Truth be told, neither did he.
Lucas was writing up Jeb’s receipt and collecting his cash when it came over him. He was suddenly absolutely ravenous. As he said goodbye to Jeb, he actually stumbled a bit, catching himself on the corner of Big Lou’s metal desk. His legs were shaky, and he wasn’t sure he had ever been this hungry before.
Placing the BE RIGHT BACK! sign on the door to the office, Lucas made his way across the street toward the diner, wondering if there was enough food in the place to satisfy his hunger.
As he stepped into the air-conditioned space, his eyes scanned the crowded diner for a place to park himself. His mother stood at the back of the restaurant, a full pot of coffee in one hand.
Cordelia Moore was staring at him with eyes that just about screamed he was in trouble. She pointed to a spot that was being vacated by an old man and his wife, and shot him a look that said Lucas had no choice.
The smells inside the diner were overwhelming, and Lucas’s belly gurgled and growled uncontrollably. He had to eat soon.
His mother approached the table, rag in hand, and started to wipe it down.
“Hey,” he said by way of greeting.
“What’s this I hear about a fight over at the garage?” she asked.
“You talked to Jeb, eh?” His stomach was aching, and he almost told her to knock off the small talk and bring him one of everything on the menu.
Almost.
“Yes, I did, and he seemed to think you might’ve been hurt pretty bad.”
She’d finished the table and stood staring at him with those angry eyes, hands on her hips.
“I’m fine,” he said, frustrated that he had to explain himself again. “He knew I was fine. … I told him I was fine.”
“Well, he didn’t seem to think you were fine.” She reached out and grabbed his face. “Let me see.”
He wrenched his face from her hand. “I told you …”
“I know, you’re fine.”
His stomach grumbled so loudly that his mother heard it over the din of the crowded diner.
“Sounds like somebody’s hungry,” she said.
He nodded, pressing a hand to his aching abdomen. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”
“How’s about the Hungryman’s Platter and a cup of coffee?”
“As fast as you can get it,” Lucas said, looking up to meet her gaze. “Please.”
She gave him the look again, then turned and headed toward the kitchen to place his order.
“And he wonders why I’m so upset about him dropping out of school,” Lucas heard her grumble as she walked up the aisle. “Big trouble is going to find him one of these days.”
Lucas shook his head as he watched her go. Diners seated nearby had heard her scolding him and were casually looking his way.
“Big trouble, huh?” he called after her. “What kind of trouble would come looking for me here?”
The private jet taxied down the single runway of the La Cholla Airpark, coming to a gradual stop in the blazing Arizona sun.
The door opened and a retractable stairway unfolded to the tarmac. Within moments a tall, white-haired figure leaning on a silver-topped cane stood in the doorway, looking out across the private airfield.
“May I help you, sir?”
The gentleman looked over at his pilot, who had joined him at the door.
“No need, Jeffrey,” the man said, limping from the door-way and slowly making his way down the steps.
“Should I arrange a ride for you?” the pilot asked, following.
“I’m way ahead of you,” the white-haired man said from the bottom of the stairs.
A navy blue Crown Victoria appeared just then, driving across the airfield toward them.
“Very good, sir,” Jeffrey said.
The man waited until the driver emerged, walked around the car, and opened the back door.
“Any idea when you’ll be wanting to return to Seraph?” Jeffrey asked as the old man was about to climb into the car.
The old man stopped, considering the question.
“If all goes according to plan, it shouldn’t take long,” he said, then entered the coolness of the limousine.
But one can never tell with things like this, the old man thought as the driver climbed back inside.
“Take me to Perdition,” the old man instructed.
And without a moment’s hesitation, the car was on its way.