24

Long Way to Go, Short Time to Get There

Sharp and maddening, the piercing cries Kraven heard in his skull muted the bustle of the urban chaos around him. Untamed and unbroken, the spirit of the dragon within him stirred and snapped at his own soul. They had wrestled within him for centuries, his body and mind a battleground for a never-ending war between the sacred and the profane.

Am I a man, part of everyday humanity? he asked himself. Or am I a forbidden monster, not part of this world? He knew that it was not simply a matter of good and evil, for these elements could be found in both the sacred and the profane.

Standing alone on the sidewalk across the street from Park View Tower, Kraven allowed the Mustang to leave without him. He dared not stop them. Alexandra was safe for the moment with her companions.

Safe for now, he thought.

A smoggy haze filtered the sun’s dying light as dusk fell upon the city. Kraven stared solemnly after the red taillights of the Mustang as they crawled farther from view through the snarled evening traffic.

He did not have to see Alexandra, stand close to her, or touch her, to know her thoughts. She is afraid, he thought, but not of me.

Her spirit called to him. Kraven felt her voice tremble within the fiber of his heart and ripple through the layers of his soul.

Her voice rang in his ears.

In the Mustang starting on its way to Peyton Manor, she had called his name, though she could not see him. She had put her head on Ben’s tensed shoulder and fallen into a deep sleep, the raven-haired stranger’s name on her lips.

“Destiny,” Callahan had mumbled to himself behind the wheel, his eyes darting back and forth from Kraven on the sidewalk, visible in his rearview mirror, to the signposts pointing to the interstate.

Alone on the sidewalk, watching them leave, Kraven willed his legs to remain planted on the walkway, as solid and immovable as the stoic trees in the park around him. He wanted to run to her, to fly to her side. But he knew that she did not need him as much as he needed her.

If the beast has escaped, Kraven reasoned, then he has returned to the witch, his mistress. They will make a stand. They will fight together until the end.

He took one step forward and then another. He knew he could still catch the Mustang if he ran.

No, he scolded himself. Along his spine shivered a tremor of anticipation. Not yet. Soon. His shoulder blades rippled as he stared up past the high-rise splattered Atlanta skyline to the last rays of the day’s light.

“Hey,” a voice yelled behind him. “Hey,” she said again, her shrill call punctuated by the blare of her car horn.

“Me?” Kraven mouthed at the platinum blonde in the red Hummer, his thumb gesturing to his chest.

Leaning over the window sill of her parked car, Krystal Woodward winked bashfully and waved the raven-haired stranger toward her. “Yes, you,” she squealed and pouted her lips until he approached.

Krystal had not been awake for long. Rummaging for the tin of mints she kept in the glove box, she popped a handful of the breath-savers into her dry mouth, her teeth cracking through the candy and spilling a fresh tang over her tongue.

Inside her head, her brain ached as if it were swelling against the prison of bone. Her nap had helped, though, to flush the dizziness, and the memory of dropping Taylor onto the street flashed into her rousing consciousness.

When she had left Taylor at the curb in front of Park View Tower, Krystal had felt lightheaded, the whirl of city traffic spinning around her drooping eyes. She knew Taylor had not seen her drive a bit farther, park down the street, and roll down her window to watch. Taylor had been too preoccupied talking to a stranger, a tall, black-haired man in camouflage pants and a faded black t-shirt.

Krystal was intensely curious as to why her stepdaughter spoke to the stranger with obvious familiarity and eagerness. This interest kept Krystal’s drowsy eyes on the pair until Kraven scooped Taylor into his arms so they could cross the street to Park View Tower. At that point, Krystal could not fight the grip of unconsciousness tipping her chest toward the steering wheel of her Hummer. Passed out behind deeply tinted windows, Krystal slept undisturbed for hours. Eventually, she shook awake in a tremor.

Gasping for air, she rolled down the other windows and panted for fresh air. No one noticed her until she called to him, the dark-haired stranger she had seen hours before with Taylor.

Hot mess, she said, evaluating herself in the rearview mirror as Kraven approached. Rubbing the smudged mascara from the tops of her cheeks, she ignored the cell phone ringing on the passenger seat beside her.

“Dr. Do Little,” she read on the screen. She combed her fingernails through the length of her flat-ironed platinum strands and rolled her eyes.

Kraven regarded the woman in the Hummer with shameful interest. Her heart raced too fast. He could hear her heart pounding in her chest. Heart-shaped lines framed her pretty, smooth face. Her perfect skin shone translucent and glowing under the streetlights. But as he stared closer, the skin peeled from her bones, and he saw the truth.

Hollow, he thought to himself.

She smiled wide at him.

In the passenger seat, her cell phone rang again. “Leave me alone,” Krystal stammered, but she finally tapped a button on the keypad and raised the phone to her ear. “Hello, honey,” she squealed.

Dr. Woodward did not answer.

“Hello,” Krystal said into the phone, frowning. Her husband’s laugh rang in her ear, while the distinct clink of wine glasses chimed under his voice.

Krystal heard a woman’s voice say her husband’s name.

Slamming the phone into the dashboard, she ended the call, fuming. “How dare you!” she said, furious.

Kraven winced as her screech stung his ears. Inside the Hummer, Krystal snatched the phone from the top of the dash and called her husband’s cell phone number. One ring. Two rings. She tapped her fingernails against the dashboard. Three rings. Voicemail.

She dialed the number again. One ring. Two rings. She squeezed the phone in her fists. Three rings. Voicemail.

A primal yell echoed from inside the car while she pounded the floor with her spiked, heeled sandals.

The cell phone clenched in her fist rang once, then twice.

“Hello,” she calmly cooed.

“You called?” Jim greeted his angry, young wife.

“You called me,” Krystal explained. “I was calling you back, sweetheart.”

“I didn’t call you,” Jim said as his dinner companion excused herself to the restroom.

“Then I guess your butt dialed me,” Krystal hissed. “I heard you. Who are you with, Jim?”

Sipping his glass of iced tea, Jim scanned his menu. “Angela Peyton,” he finally explained. “She’s here in Miami on business also.”

Krystal dug her nails into the steering wheel. She knew Angela Peyton was beautiful and brilliant.

“Maybe I could come down there with you?” Krystal suggested.

“Krystal, don’t,” said her husband, the sound of a chair scraping a floor punctuating his hesitation. “We’ll talk later,” he said and ended the call.

“Yes, we will,” Krystal promised her husband after he hung up on her. Dropping her cell phone in her lap, she snatched red lip gloss from its perch in a cup holder under her elbow and smothered her grin in glistening lacquer. Puckering her lips, she kissed the air and tossed her platinum blonde locks over her shoulder as her eyes met Kraven’s curious stare.

“Do I know you?” she asked Kraven. She squinted at his face in the dim glow of the overhead streetlight.

“No,” Kraven told her, shaking his head, his raven mane falling across his face.

“I saw you talking to Taylor,” Krystal remembered. Kraven nodded and strode closer, his hip leaning against the driver’s door of the Hummer as he folded his arms across his chest. “Yes,” he told Krystal as she wilted under his gaze.

“Woo,” she said, rubbing the sweat from her collarbone with the back of her hand. “Sure is muggy tonight,” she said, a wave of heat lapping against her skin as Kraven stood closer.

Silly woman, he thought, his eyes boring into her pretty face long enough to see the image running through her head. Blinking, he rubbed his forehead. The roar of an airplane echoed in his ears, as loud as if he stood on the runway. The jet soared into the night sky.

“Are you looking for Taylor?” Kraven asked.

Krystal batted her mascara-caked lashes. “No,” she admitted, a smile broadening across her lips. “I need to get going,” she said, turning the key in the ignition. The engine roared to life, and she turned on the air. Cranking the air conditioning to high reminded her of the icy reception her husband had given her on the cell phone.

“You need a ride?” she asked the stranger leaning on her Hummer. Kraven shoved his long, raven hair behind his ears and clenched his sturdy jaw. “Please say yes,” she whispered to herself.

Smirking, Kraven nodded his head yes. “I need to go to the airport,” he confided, deciding that he needed a way to have a clear take-off, unnoticed.

“That’s where I’m headed,” Krystal said, patting the empty leather passenger seat beside her. “Get in.”

Hesitation seized his tongue as Kraven studied the temptation.

“I don’t bite,” Krystal told him. “Let’s go.”

“Is that a threat?” Kraven asked, opening the passenger door. “Or an invitation?” he inquired sheepishly, sprawling into the seat beside her.

As he settled on the edge of the seat, Kraven wrapped his arms across his chest, his gaze focused steadily on the windshield.

“Relax,” Krystal told him and patted his knee. Her hand recoiled, the withdrawal of her palm a reflex to the searing heat of his body.

Krystal kept silent and turned the air conditioning vents on the dash toward her flushed cheeks. Beside her, Kraven eased his back into the seat, his eyes drawn to the bare arms of Krystal’s rail-thin body. Goosebumps sprouted across her flesh.

Winding her way through traffic, Krystal concentrated on the plan forming in her head: Fly to Miami. Surprise my husband. Go shopping.

Kraven finally spoke. “How do you know Alexandra’s friend?” he asked her as the Hummer glided through traffic. He already knew the answer.

“Who?” asked Krystal, confusion wrinkling her smooth forehead. She smelled smoke, but not cigarette smoke or diesel smoke. It was not smoke like some electrical wire or hose had popped loose under the hood and had started a fire. She smelled fireplace smoke, the kind that used to blaze in the iron woodstove in her grandparents’ living room during the winter.

“Taylor,” Kraven explained. He wondered if the soul inside the body next to him could be as evil in depth as she was beautiful in the flesh.

“My stepdaughter,” Krystal spat with contempt. Kraven shivered, recoiling at her venom. “How do you know Taylor?” she asked, scouring his blank face. “You two looked awfully well acquainted this afternoon.”

“I, too, am a friend of Alexandra’s,” Kraven explained.

Krystal found her way to the interstate, the glow of the rising moon illuminating their path. The Hummer shot past a trail of slow-moving sedans and minivans.

Above their heads, the white and blue lights on the underbellies of circling airplanes twinkled like stars in the night sky. Stifling a low moan, Kraven winced and stretched his back.

“If you are a friend of Alexandra’s, then she is a lucky girl,” Krystal told him, raising her plucked eyebrows and stealing a glance at her handsome passenger.

Kraven ached to be near Alexandra again. If only I could make her understand, he thought. The Hummer drew closer to the bustling airport. He considered turning back, retreating, letting Alexandra believe he had only been a dream, or even a nightmare.

He felt the Hummer come to a stop. “Here we are,” Krystal offered shyly and brazenly brushed a lock of hair from his sad eyes.

“Thank you,” Kraven said, pushing open the passenger door.

“You’re welcome,” she said, leaning closer and closing her eyes. When nothing happened, she opened her eyes.

“Gone?” Krystal asked the empty passenger seat.

Stalking the shadows at the edge of the parking deck, Kraven eluded the security lights bathing the aisles of parked cars in a sallow glow. Running down a flight of stairs, he found the bottom floor and followed a throng of shuffling silver-haired ladies from the First Baptist Church of Happy Valley. Slowly but surely, they moved from a white passenger bus into the main airport terminal.

When the doors of the entrance slid open before him, Kraven paused, uncertain of his plan until he spotted a potential prey. Every two hours, Wayne Jefferson strolled up from the bowels of the international concourse for an extended cigarette break outside the main entrance doors. He had been an airport security guard for five years, each of them spent on foot patrol between International Concourse Gates One and Fifteen. According to the pedometer he kept strapped to his wrist, he had walked hundreds of miles watching as humanity flooded past him daily.

Patting his shirt’s front pocket, he winked at a short-skirted, red-haired flight attendant wheeling her suitcase behind her. “Ma’am,” he said as she passed, his hand retrieving a cigarette from the half-empty pack in his shirt pocket.

Because his gaze was glued to the back of the redhead bobbing through the crowd toward the security lines, he did not notice the senior ladies bearing down upon him.

Ethel Jenkins did not mean to run over his toe with her motorized scooter. “Pardon me, sonny,” she shouted over her shoulder on her way to the security gates. “Vegas, here we come,” she said, shaking a fist into the air.

On his knees, Wayne bit his tongue to stifle a curse. Inside his boot, his big toe throbbed.

Hobbling to his feet, he shoved the butt end of his unlit cigarette to his grimacing mouth. “Excuse me,” he said to Ethel, stretching the words with sarcastic accusation. But she was long gone.

In his impatience, he did not notice the tall, raven-haired man hovering at his back. “Excuse me,” Kraven mimicked him and tapped the security guard lightly on the shoulder.

Weak, Kraven thought. He smelled fear. Too easy.

“Get your hand off of me,” Wayne blustered. He stood six inches shorter in his boots than Kraven. Completely bald except for his unruly, thick eyebrows, he anxiously rubbed the prickly stubble sprouting behind his ears.

“You need to come with me,” Kraven said, wiping the smirk from his mouth with his fingers.

“Do I?” Wayne asked, rocking back on his heels, his fingers entwined in the loops of his leather belt, the pressure of his holster skimming his shaking thigh.

“Yes,” Kraven assured him. “A bag,” he said, throwing his thumb over his shoulder. “There’s an abandoned bag.”

Training and instinct focused the security guard’s eyes on the middle of the intimidating stranger’s forehead. He saw no guilt there.

“Where?” asked Wayne.

“Follow me,” Kraven told him, his azure eyes locked on the hazel orbs of the skittish security guard.

Wayne fell in, lockstep, beside Kraven as they advanced toward the doors of the terminal. Forgetting to light his cigarette, Wayne kept his hands shoved inside his pants pockets.

The passersby, a multitude of travelers, seemed a blur to Wayne. They walked together into the evening. They went toward the crowded parking deck and up two flights of cement steps to the open, top floor.

Hypnotically marching—left, right, left—the security guard’s boots squeaked against the cement. His path did not veer from the lead forged by Kraven.

Kraven knew the Hummer would be unlocked, even before he placed his fingers on the door handle. She had been anxious and furious, which had made her careless. So what if the truck was stolen? She had insurance. Her husband would buy her another one.

She did remember the unlocked car while she was waiting in line to buy a ticket on the first flight out of Atlanta that night to Miami Beach. But she was in too much of a hurry to go back.

In the parking deck, Wayne obeyed Kraven, who told him to climb inside the Hummer and hand over his uniform and gun. Wayne would do anything to be left alone. He wanted to lie down, close his eyes, and sleep away the pain boring into his head between his eyes.

Removing his clothes, he felt much cooler. “Go,” he stuttered, giving his clothes to Kraven. Then he passed out across the back seat of the Hummer and did not awake until dawn.

Although Wayne was shorter than Kraven, the security guard stood wider, and his clothes fit loosely over Kraven’s t-shirt and camouflage cargo pants. Cinching a belt around his trim waist, Kraven flexed and stretched the tendons in his back as they constricted, a spasm of anticipation tingling through his taut muscles.

“Sweet dreams,” he told the security guard snoring in the back seat and slammed closed the back door of the Hummer.

Kraven walked swiftly toward the airport terminal. Lost in the steady stream of travelers passing in and out of the glass doors, he rode the wave of preoccupied humanity to the security gates and flashed his gleaming brass badge and wide grin at a security officer to bypass her lengthy line.

Pushed by the throng of chattering travelers toward an escalator, he stood patiently on the moving staircase as he descended into the bustling airport. At the foot of the moving stairs, the crowd spilled from the steps onto a platform to wait for the monorail train that would whisk them to their concourses. Some travelers, however, chose to walk to their planes through the miles of windowless, underground corridors.

Eager to rid himself of the babbling crowds, Kraven chose to head underground. Through the cement-block walls, he could hear the roar of engines throttling for take-off. His heartbeat pounded in his ears.

Not yet, he scolded himself as his shoulder blades trembled. His eyes darted across the faces of the ambling travelers, looking past them down the endless cement corridor.

He saw it no more than twenty yards farther down the hallway: his escape route. The door was inconspicuous and unmarked, the same pale white as the walls. It had no handle and no lock.

Carefully, slowly, Kraven approached. Nodding politely to a couple in matching khaki shorts and Hawaiian print shirts, he let them pass as they rolled their overstuffed carry-on suitcases behind them.

No one else was approaching, not for another hundred yards in either direction. Alone, he stuck his ear to the door, the chill metal vibrating against his skin as the rumble of a jet engine thundered on the runway on the other side.

Kraven raised his leg and kicked dead center into the door. It swung helplessly on rusted hinges, and he pushed his way outside into the night.

“Hey you!” a shrill voice accosted him. Kraven blinked in the moonlight. A whistle popped in his ears. A man in a neon-yellow vest and hard hat pointed a flashlight at his face.

Kraven jumped at the man, who was standing behind the wheel of a luggage cart. “Be quiet,” Kraven said softly, his hand over the confused man’s mouth. Kraven placed him gently on the ground.

Kraven seized the steering wheel of the luggage cart and stepped on the accelerator pedal. When he lunged forward, all of the suitcases spilled to the ground. He raced down the center of the taxiway, where plane after plane was waiting for take-off. Passing the roaring jets, Kraven clasped his gut in his hand as he steered the stolen cart to the front of the line.

From his belly, a spark rose into his throat, and his lips parted wide. Slamming his boot against the brake pedal, he flew from the seat, a cloud of smoke cloaking his rising body. He spit a flame at the rear of his abandoned vehicle.

The gas tank ignited, the explosion engulfing the cart in raging orange and blue flames. Kraven brushed the sparks of fire from his flesh and waited behind the burning cart, confident no one could see him. All the people aboard the planes were focused on the fire, not the figure lurking inside the smoke. Aboard the plane closest to the burning cart, the pilots listened breathlessly to the control tower, which halted all take-offs.

All the airplanes waiting in the sky to land were told to circle. No approaches would be permitted until the fire was safely extinguished.

As the cloud of thick, gray smoke engulfed the runway, Kraven released his grip upon humanity and tore the melting shirt from his back. Fleshy, red-scaled wings sprang from mounds beneath his shoulder blades and stretched above his head.

Crouching to the cement, his thighs parallel to the ground, he closed his eyes and then sprang upward. Higher and higher he rose. A shroud of smoke swirled across his flapping wings and concealed his flight.

A low cloud bank occupied the evening sky around the airport and hid Kraven from disbelieving mortals. The firefighters disappeared beneath him, their figures too small and fragile for him to recognize as he soared into the night.

I will find her, he promised himself. He could hear her heart beating somewhere below him. His angel did not live in the heavens. He would descend again for her, die for her, destroy himself if that meant saving her.