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Gabriel sat in the dining room, staring down into a plate of enchiladas surrounded by a moat of green chile. He tried to get his thoughts to behave in a logical way, mind focusing on how he had climbed into the house on Guadalupe Trail yesterday. Or was it the day before?
Easy with a screwdriver. Not so easy to sidestep a cat, tail lashing and fangs bared.
On that day, Gabriel left his shoes under the window behind a clump of juniper. He hadn’t found what he came for. In all that rooting around he made sure everything was put back in its proper place. The books on the shelf, the pillows on the bed and the mattress under it. Until he heard the crunch of tires on gravel.
Instincts were as clear to a hunter as they were to the hunted. But there was always one place hunters never looked. Somewhere so obvious they’d only smack themselves. Somewhere they could see a tiny part of you if they looked hard enough.
The slow squeak of the front door told him the detective was alert and likely had a weapon. Must have seen the window unlatched. There weren’t any footprints, Gabriel had taken care of that. Used his sleeve to wipe down the windowsill and the carpet to dry his feet.
He followed the detective through the house, waited until all hiding places had been checked. Mimicked every hitch of breath so precisely that the detective could only hear his own.
Gabriel slipped into an upstairs closet and gazed through angled slats at the bathroom door, open wide enough to see a figure behind frosted glass. Colored tiles added a touch of whimsy to a bland design ‒ fitting, he thought, for a family home.
The shower, the drumming of water on glass and the crisp scent of soap. The detective must have sensed something, must have felt the air trickle along his flanks just as a shark feels the distress signals of its prey.
He didn’t flinch. Not until the cell phone clattered on the sink. Then he lunged for it, faster than a snake. Naked and dripping. Muscles tense.
Gabriel had already touched that sink, the door, the towels, and he sensed the bond and fed off the adrenalin the detective had. He would have enjoyed soaking up more of that view if Adel’s whiny telephone voice hadn’t interrupted the trance, putting him right back in front of the plate of enchiladas he couldn’t eat.
She swore she didn’t have the book, but it was a lie. He could tell she was being careful with her words as if someone else was listening. And that someone else had called him later, feigned an accent so close to Adel’s it took him by surprise.
Demon suddenly sputtered into life as if Gabriel’s thoughts had automatically turned the dial on a mental transmitter.
“Wasn’t expecting that, were you?” Demon said. “Better pop a few more of your favorite things before you have any more bad dreams. What was it last time? Oh, yes. You wait beside the railroad tracks to die. Your life, which should have been full of promise, is a bitter disappointment. You’re a slave to drugs. You’re a slave to everything. It is your birthright to suffer prejudice until your dying breath. But there’s no alternative. Better step in front of that speeding train...”
Gabriel wouldn’t allow himself to feel polluted and inferior. He wouldn’t allow himself to be bombarded with a pack of lies.
“Lies? Oh, no, these aren’t lies. You’ve been sold into bonded labor, my friend. No better than dirty rags. Human waste. The lowest of the low. University is a distant dream in your grubby little world because forty-five percent of students have no hope of graduating and the rest can’t even write their own names.”
“We’re not stupid.”
“All humans are stupid. I mean it. They fail every time. Of course, we revel in every failure and wonder why Master puts up with it, why his patience hasn’t cracked. Why he hasn’t cut them off entirely. Why he didn’t crush that unworkable, wanton piece of clay into a tight little ball and throw it away. He should have. But they’re his precious little mud people. You are his precious little mud heir.”
Demon always pulled the jealousy card. He tried to compare himself to humans, kept pushing it further and further to see how far he could bring Gabriel down. It was excruciating to watch.
But in all the mind games Demon played, all the bloodletting, the gory acts of murder, even when Gabriel felt himself walking on a thin layer of ice that seemed to crack under every step, he was somehow fused to him. His dear and despised familiar.
“There is something else,” Demon said, tapping long nails against the tabletop with the rapid staccato of a stopwatch. “You still have a monkey to catch.”
