Nocturnus Eternal Ch. 01

He regarded the neon advertisement lights mounted above the doors and in the windows of the various bars and second-class stores to be an enemy. Anything that could give away his intention before he was ready was a threat. Light was the enemy of shadows, which is why he and the others did their business in the night. It was safe in the night, a whole hell of a lot safer than trying to pull a simple grab, snatch and bang during the lunch hour.

Quentin understood the delicate psychology of fear and the simple mechanics behind it like most people understood the basics of breathing. When it got dark, people would hurry to get home faster. The shadows would prompt the average guy or girl to feel a little more nervous walking alone on a street they knew well in the day, but did recognize at night. Mistakes were made easily when your eyes began playing tricks on you as shadows moved and shapes formed in the dark. Fear birthed carelessness, and carelessness would usually deliver some poor sap into the shadows of the city.

Quentin knew where to find the shadows.

His companions weren't as deft in their craft. He had accepted that about them early on and while he might have regretted working with them sometimes, he knew that it was he who allowed them to tag along. He was in charge and they worked for him. Both of them were slow and careless. Quentin figured it was blind luck that had kept the two out of jail thus far. Everyone had his or her usefulness though. His boys were both pretty strong and if he needed a patsy, he knew that they would do nicely in a pinch.

Bobby, the shortest of the three was a whiz kid with all things that locked and hinged. He was like an encyclopedia of the various methods employed in breaking and entering. His stout appearance and lazy eye disguised his intelligence, but only to a certain point. While he could decipher the code for an alarm system in less than five seconds, he still couldn't take a shit and wipe without leaving his shorts burnt with enough rubber to make even the most seasoned truck driver cringe. Quentin thought it was the low-end equivalent of a nuclear physicist habitually forgetting to tie his shoes or zip up his pants.

James was their map. He'd grown up on the streets of the city and knew every single inch of it by heart. Very often his knowledge of the area could be more readily relied on than the official maps drawn up by state. Like Bobby though, his talent didn't quiet compensate for his lack of common sense. James was notorious for leaving things behind at robberies such as fingerprints and occasionally being caught on camera.

But that's where Quentin came in.

He was the glue that held them together during their night operations. It was his careful planning and attention to details that kept them alive and out of the prisons. The pairing of James and Bobby was a stroke of genius as far as he was concerned. Whatever shortcomings the two had, Quentin mopped up after and more than compensated for. It was a perfect check and balance system. They had been working this part of town for over three years, and never once been caught.

Steam curled and snaked around their muddy boots as they followed their prey, each of them smiling inwardly and perfectly aware of the acts they were about to commit. The police and other such guardians of the law refer to this state of mind as premeditation. To them, it was simply their way of life. They thought about their next crime the way most people thought about their next paycheck. To Quentin, it was his purpose in life. It was the only thing he was ever really good at. He always thought it was a shame his talents lay so far south of the law. He knew he would have made a good cop.

"Good cops aren't all that different from crooks," his father had once told him, shortly before being shot to death in a fouled robbery attempt in Rio Linda, "They think the same, they just go about their business differently."

These three men are the faces that people see in the badly rendered mug shots on the bulletin boards in the Post Office and at the local Supermarkets. They are the men who break the rules and take whatever they want whenever they want. They dress in flannel coats and keep dark knit caps low to their brows, pulled tight to their skulls. They're the men who blend in to the world, like some kind of species of human chameleon. There's nothing special about the way they look or walk. In fact, it is there unremarkable stature that gives them such perfect anonymity.

It was this camouflage that allowed them to follow the lone woman all the way from the bookstore on Fair Oaks Boulevard to the downtown stretch. It was a long walk, but something told Quentin she was going to be a special catch. The woman turned down an alley between two large apartment buildings that towered up eight stories into the stormy sky.

Quentin couldn't believe she was walking into the alley.

Trash and leftovers from the last decade cluttered the narrow passage as she made her way through. A single halogen light, mounted to the side of the building six floors up, provided just enough illumination to reveal the fire escapes. They cast long, ribbed shadows down the building walls where they disappeared in the darkness. Water dripped from the steel constructs and pitter-pattered on the trashcan lids below like weak machine gun fire.

"We're in luck," James whispered to Quentin, "This alley is a dead end."

Quentin raised a finger to his lips to silence him.

"Deathtrap..." James trailed off.

The woman cocked her head and stopped in the middle of the rank alley as her dark, long coat caught a draft of wind. Quentin suspected she sensed them, but as James had so adequately put it, it was a deathtrap. Even if she ran she would have to get past them. He and his companions pressed on into the darkness after her, their heavy boots loud and obvious against the pavement. He could see that she had red hair as the distance closed between them. His eagerness to grab her and take everything was as potent as the stench of the trash crunching under their feet.

The three men followed, now feeling sure that the shadows were dark enough in the alley to hide their act. The woman started walking faster. The men started running. Her red hair bounced in the rain as she picked up speed. Water splashed up from puddles as they thundered down the alley after her. Garbage cans fell over and spilled refuse out into the muddy floor of the dead-end gap.

The woman ran, her eyes wildly looking over her shoulder as three silhouettes bore down on her. Her foot caught on a length of broken, rusty pipe and she tumbled to the ground. She hit hard, her hand scraping along the slick pavement. She scrambled to get up as a heavy hand fell on her back.

"Hey sweetie," Quentin laughed and grabbed her by the back of her coat, hauling her up to her feet. He shoved her into Bobby's open arms and guffawed with laughter, "You take a wrong turn?"

"She took a wrong turn, yes sir!" Bobby agreed giddily, his eyes bulging with anticipation, "We gots to ed-ju-CATE her!"

A small card fell from her long, black coat to the ground. Bobby knelt down and picked it up. After spending a moment to read it thoroughly, he grinned.

"What?" James asked.

"She works at the museum," he laughed as though he had just heard the best joke ever, "She's smart enough to have a job there, but too stupid to stay out of a dead end alley!"

"Education is important," Quentin smiled, revealing his yellowed teeth.

Quentin looked her over, appraising her. Her outfit didn't look like anything he had ever seen an egg head wear. Her coat looked to be made of some kind of leather, black like the color of India Ink and adorned with subtle fluid designs. Her boots are thick and matched perfectly to the coat, three elegant brass buckles along the shins keeping the straps secure. As the wind began to blow, her coat opened and he saw her pants were equally as black, while her shirt was as white as snow.

"Nice outfit," Quentin remarked as James looked at her greedily.

"I'll bet that coat was expensive," James said casually

"She's a smart dresser," Quentin nodded and leaned in close to her. His breath was rancid smelling, as though his mouth hadn't seen any hygienic care in years.

Lightning flashed overhead and lit the alley as crazy shadows dancing along the walls. The three attackers recoiled like cockroaches under a flashlight. Quentin grasped her with dirty, greasy hands and yanked her coat open. He leered at her and placed his hand over her left breast, feeling her through her white blouse. His breathing was oddly calm and slow despite the running and the thrill of the impending robbery and kill.

"What do you think?" he grinned at her, "Want me to teach you a lesson?"

The woman closed her eyes tight and said nothing as lightning flashed and revealed her smooth, dulcet features to him. She was very beautiful, and there was no doubt in Quentin's mind as to who would have her first. The woman was silent as the rain poured down harder.

"That's a 'yes' if I ever heard one!" James yelled and whooped loudly.

"Shut the hell up," Quentin said and glared at his associate, "Could you be any louder, you dumb shit?"

James stepped back apologetically, his flat blue eyes still giddy as his fleshy lips curled into a sick smile.

"What's your name?" Quentin asked and squeezed her breast again.

The red-haired woman only looked down at her black pants and boots.

"What is your name?"

The steady drumming of heavy raindrops answered him.

"Maybe she's deaf and dumb?" James snickered.

"I'm talking to you!" Quentin shouted in her face, ignoring his cohort.

Bobby laughed, thoroughly amused. He eyed the wet handprint on the woman's white blouse. Before this was done, he hoped to make a few prints of his own. And not just on her tits.

"Speak up you bitch!" Quentin screamed and shook her violently, his face a mask of pure rage.

He wasn't a man given to outbursts, but this one was pushing his buttons. She was making him look bad in front of his men, undermining his image. Part of the glory of the job was the reputation you earned by not only being smartest but also the meanest asshole on the block. It was as simple as that. When he said jump, he expected to people forgo asking "How high, sir?" and just do it.

He wanted to see her fear. He wanted to feel the power and authority. She was supposed to cower and beg for her life, beg him not rape her and hurt her. Yet, for all his violent shaking and throttling of her she would not give in to him. This bitch woman would not give him what he wanted. So he would have to take it.

Quentin grabbed her by the neck and jerked her as hard as he could, his thick fingers digging into the soft flesh under her jaw line. Her hair flipped and water sprayed from her locks as her head violently lashed back and forth like a rag doll. James and Bobby slowly stopped laughing as they noticed the snarl on Quentin's face.

They stepped back and gave their boss some room to work knowing he was now officially in a rage. It wasn't often that Quentin lost his cool, and they knew enough not to get in his way when he did. Very few people ever angered him to this point, and it usually took a lot more than just some dumb chick saying nothing at all. He ranted and growled at her and choked her and still she would not say anything.

"Maybe she's a retard, Q?" James suggested as rain pelted them all from above.

Quentin loosened his grip and released her neck. The woman staggered back. Threatening her wasn't getting the job done and certainly yelling wasn't either. He sighed and shook his head, looking at her for a long moment. She remained still, looking down at the ground. Quentin collected his cool and drew his hand back. He waited for a reaction and frowned.

The crazy bitch only looked at her boots.

He slapped her as hard as he could, the impact echoing though the alley. He screamed at her, "You best answer me, you slut!"

He slapped her again.

Nothing.

"You're too stupid to know how much trouble you're in?"

Quentin's hand met her face yet again...

"Answer me!"

And again...

And again...

He shook his hand out as it began to tingle from the pain. With an angry yell of frustration, he shoved her against the brick wall. He positioned himself in front of her and drew his fist back. His whole body turned, all his strength being loaded into this single punch that he was certain would assert his dominance over her. Breaking her nose into a hundred pieces would get her attention, by God. He sneered and took a deep breath. His body was tensed and ready to strike as he leaned in and asked her, "You don't learn too quick, do ya?"

She said nothing.

Drops of water fell from her wet hair and splashed to the ground in the silence that preceded the impending strike.

"You bitch," he threw the punch, growling like a wild animal.

His fist met her flesh, but instead of smashing her nose up into her skull he found that he had connected with her outstretched palm. In her delicate hand she held his giant balled up fist like a little girl holding a basketball. Quentin tried to jerk his hand back, but her grip was like an iron vice.

"What the fuck?" he whispered, teeth gritted in surprise and true frustration.

The rain suddenly stopped.

She slowly tilted her pale beautiful face up at him, impassive and unconcerned as lightning seared overhead. The world seemed to fall eerily silent as she brushed a waterlogged tangle of her red hair away from her pale face. Her eyes remained closed, not quenched tight but rather gently shut as though she had no fear of him and was completely relaxed.

Quentin suddenly felt uneasy as he realized her cheeks weren't even red from his volley of slaps. He had been hitting her hard too. Hard enough to leave a black eye at least, or even a bruise on her cheek bone. Her fingers held his hand in an impossible grip, unforgiving and unmovable. Bobby and James only stood there, awestruck and their mouths gaped open.

And then she spoke.

"I am a slow learner," the red headed woman said quietly

Quentin opened his mouth to rage at her, but stopped. He gasped as her fingers closed over his knuckles. Tears burst from his eyes and the bones in his hand splintered, cracking under her strength. He looked to his friends wildly as she continued to compress his mighty hand, her fingers digging into his flesh and breaking it wide open. Blood poured out of the wounds and mixed with a new misty wash of rainwater as she destroyed his essential tool of the trade. The alley echoed with the sounds of bone snapping and one desperate man begging to be released.

"You're breaking my hand!" he screamed as he sank to his knees, his free hand grasping his trapped forearm, "Your fucking cunt! You're breaking it!"

"I know," she replied evenly, her eyes still closed.

In a single motion that was executed faster than the eye could follow, the woman twisted his right arm by his broken hand and snapped it in two. Bobby could hear the wet, dull *crack* of bone breaking under skin as Quentin screamed a silent, high-pitched cry of agony. His countenance was open and contorted in pure torment as his brain registered what had just happened to him.

Bobby looked to James (who was already regretting laying eyes on this woman) as their fearless leader began crying like a child. Quentin looked at his ruined arm and hand as she released him, his face white and filled with disbelief.

"Why?" he managed, his voice as broken and as useless as his arm.

"Why not?" the woman asked, her head cocked gently to one side.

Quentin suddenly wondered if he were dreaming all this as he watched as her eyes open and regard him coldly. Her corneas glowed a brilliant blue in the dark, as though an internal supernatural fire lit her from within. Quentin dropped to his knees. Her luminescent eyes looked down on him as she asserted herself to her full six-foot height, any illusions of weakness or fear now gone. As her attackers watched, they realized that it was they who had been lured into the trap. It was they who were the intended prey.

"Quentin Maurice Handle," she said, "A career thief. A rapist of seven women, including your own mother and both your sisters. A killer of five women, including your own mother. Funny that you left your two sisters alive..."

She glanced at Bobby and said, "Bobby Grogan. You steal from your father's grocery store on Fulton Avenue and secretly lust after your own niece."

"I never," Bobby shook his head, backing up to the opposite wall as those brilliant blue lights burned through him. He knocked over a full can of trash and spilled the greasy contents out over his feet, eyes wide with fear and conviction, "I never ever-"

"You gave her too much cold medicine," the beautiful woman said as her eyes bore into him, "Nyquil, wasn't it? You watched her drift off to sleep while your brother and his wife went to the movies. And then when she was silent, you took that little eleven year old girl and raped her until she began to wake up a half hour later."

"No no," Bobby shook his head.

"Why deny it, Bobby? You enjoyed it."

"No."

"You did it, Bobby."

Bobby worked his mouth open to say something, but found his throat and brain would not cooperate. He knew exactly what she was talking about, and the apparent fact that she seemed to know his crimes as well as he did chilled him to the bone. She even knew that he had given the kid a bottle of Nyquil to loosen her up. Bobby felt into his jacket pocket and cradled his seven-inch switchblade with his fingers. He felt as though he might puke as he rubbed his thumb over the spring-release button.

"How do you know?" he whispered.

"When she woke up," the woman continued, "You gave her another dose of the medicine along with a heavy sedative... from your own stash of valium just to be safe."

Bobby tightened his grip on the knife, her words like a hot needle in his mind.

"Isn't she experiencing bad dreams now? Doesn't your brother confide in you his fears over her mental health?"

"Shut up."

"How do you answer him? What do you tell yourself to justify it, Bobby?"

"Shut up..."

"What do you tell yourself, Bobby?"

He hated how she said his name. It felt like she was mocking him. Bobby wanted to cover his ears and run. He turned his face away from the woman, his cheeks burning with shame and anger. He shook his head and began swaying back and forth.

"You tell yourself she had it coming, don't you?"

Bobby's lips pursed together as she read his mind.

"She always seems to hide when you come over now, doesn't she?"

"Shut up!"

The woman looked right at him, "She hides from you."

"Shut the fuck up!"

"You thought your secret was safe," she pushed further, "But children act more on instinct than on what they're told don't they, Bobby?"

"I said shut up!" Bobby screamed, now at the point of lividly impotent tears. He gnashed his teeth together as spittle flew from his wet, thick lips and whipped the knife out of his pocket. He jammed the small silver button down and the blade sprung out with a tiny, barely audible click.

"I wouldn't," she warned him, her brilliant blue eyes locked on him as she favored him with a small half smile and added, "Not yet anyway."

The rain hammered down harder as lightning flashed overhead. The arc of natural electricity burned in the sky like a phantom hand with thousands of wicked fingers stretching out. It faded and was followed by a long roll of thunder.

The woman turned to James, Quentin still on his knees and nursing his broken right arm, as Bobby stood poised, his knife out in front of him and shaking in his nervous hand.

"James Darren," she said, somehow watching Bobby as she looked at the third criminal, "Drug dealer, pedophile and sodomizer of little boys."