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  Daryl stared at the receiver, the dial tone somehow reaching his ears through the blast of Virus, an older KMFDM album from 1989. He hated this album, in general hated any music from the previous decade or earlier, no matter what it was. Had to be 1990 or later. And here it was 1994. What are we doing listening to this old shit anyway?

  "Time to get out of here," he muttered to the phone. He shivered as goose bumps pimpled his flesh.

  He returned the phone to its cradle and started down the hallway, toward the music, grabbing a cooler out of the fridge on the way. It was so loud he felt like he was walking through a lake of sound.

  Then he remembered.

  Jesus Christ, what a pipehead. We got out of school a week ago. It's summer vacation!

  The revelation added bounce to his step. The music didn't sound so bad anymore, and when he entered the living room he walked over a body to turn up the music. The room was a wreck, but then it always was after one of Steve's parties. The kid he stepped over was a freshman, just turned fifteen, who was the younger brother of Gina, one of the girls Steve used to boff. Steve and Gina had an argument the night before, something about Steve wanting to chase every girl in school but her, but he let Colm come over anyway, because he was silly and stupid when he got high and made everyone laugh.

  Steve was passed out on the huge black leather pit group, a monstrous chunk of furniture that swallowed up the entire corner of the room. Two girls, partially clothed, lay more or less astride him, zonked out as well. Daryl didn't remember their names, but vaguely recalled one of them flirting with him at the party. One was in a black leather skirt, no top, and had smeared white-and-black Gothic makeup all over Steve's tank top. The other wore some kind of Spandex jumpsuit that might as well have been sprayed on. Steve was nineteen, but the two girls couldn't have been over thirteen.

  Jail bait. The expression carried a stronger meaning for him today. Not just for Steve, but for me too now.

  Wine and beer had stained the charcoal carpet, easily fixed since Steve had already made arrangements for the carpet cleaner to be in the next day . . . or was it today? It didn't matter anymore. It was summer vacation. Reality be damned.

  He knew there were others at the party, and chances were they were in different places throughout the house, under beds, in beds, probably screwing this very moment. Suddenly he was glad he was the first one up—is it really one in the afternoon?—because now all he wanted was out. Being in the company of people, any people, held little interest. He twisted the cooler open and drank, wincing at the tartness; this one was more wine than the rest. Stronger. His stomach lurched, but he knew that if he could get a few gulps down he would be okay.

  He found what appeared to be his socks next to the couch near Steve's head. A good start. It still didn't explain why he was half naked. That would be a real bitch if I got laid last night and couldn't remember it. It wouldn't be the first time that had happened.

  His skin stuck to the leather couch, reminding him he had other articles of clothing to find before he could go anywhere.

  A search of the house was beginning to look necessary, though he didn't really want to face any of the people who'd graced his party the night before, mostly because he didn't remember most of what he'd said or done. Whatever it was, it was probably embarrassing. Waking up mostly naked wasn't a good sign.

  His eyes strayed to the contents of the big glass coffee table. Amid the debris of beer cans he saw Steve's glass pipe, a lighter, and several loose rocks of crack cocaine. His mouth watered. He reached for the rig but stopped halfway, remembering his semi-nudity. If he fired up the pipe now, he would have a harder time finding his clothes. Better to wait until he had at least found his pants.

  He glanced out the big bay window that looked over the driveway and saw his red '94 Corvette blocked by a Camaro, a prissy little BMW, and a black Ford Mustang. Four other cars were parked down the drive, between the house and the security gate. What's more, he saw a black crease in one fender of his 'Vette. His blood started to boil.

  "Shit," he said. Not only was he unable to hop in his car and drive away, his car was damaged. By some jerk driving a Ford. He couldn't remember whose car it was, but dammit, he would find out before he left.

  Pissed, Daryl stalked back into the living room, where his companions remained, unmoving, and started powering off black boxes in the entertainment center until the music ceased.

  "Steve, dammit, wake up," Daryl shouted. "Some asshole driving a Mustang dinged my 'Vette. Who is he? Where is he?"

  Livid with rage, his hangover, which had started to subside with the cooler, bloomed in his cranium once again. He stood in the middle of the living room, glaring down at his sleeping friends. They didn't move.

  Daryl smirked as he considered devious ways to wake them, all of them involving ice water. His ears rang in the sudden absence of noise. And still, they didn't move.

  "Okay, Steve. It's time to get up. Time to call the carpet cleaner guy."

  Nothing. Daryl frowned. They must have just crashed. Jeez, how late were they up, anyway?

  He went over to nudge Steve, and froze when he touched his arm. Not only was it white, it was ice-cold. Limply, it fell to the floor. Daryl reached for his wrist, started feeling for a pulse, though he wasn't sure exactly where it would be. When he couldn't find a rhythm there, he felt Steve's chest, recoiling at the coldness there. No beat, no nothing. Daryl was running out of things to check.

  Maybe the girls . . .

  He touched their shoulders.

  Maybe not . . .

  Daryl stepped back and regarded the scene numbly, never before feeling as devoid of emotion as he did then. I am nothing, I feel nothing. Nothing happened. Nothing will happen to me. . . .

  He left the living room, first checking Colm, who was lying facedown in the carpet, and wondered why this didn't seem strange at first. Colm felt as cold and lifeless as the others; when Daryl turned him over, his eyes were still open. One pupil had withdrawn to the size of a dust speck. The other was wide open, blocking the iris completely.

  There have to be others in the house. They can't all be dead.

  There. He said it. Dead.

  "Anybody up there?" he called up a long staircase. No one answered.

  Daryl found himself at the top of the stairs, not remembering how he had gotten up there. The last bedroom upstairs belonged to Steve, but Daryl knew Steve wouldn't be in there.

  A wall of bright light blinded him as he opened the door. The fluorescent desk lamp, turned upward, stared at him with its long, luminous eye. On the desk, which had a visible layer of dust on it, sat a pile of schoolbooks. Steve's. There's the trig book we were supposed to be looking at last night.

  The phone trilled, this time a different, more annoying sound. The plastic receiver looked like it came out of a Cracker Jack box. Daryl sat on the edge of a waterbed and reached for the cheap phone.

  "Yeah?" he said, making no effort to conceal his annoyance.

  "Daryl?" Adam again. Over the phone loud music thumped away, something electronic. Adam had to shout to be heard.

  "Christ, what time is it?"

  A long pause. "Look, some of the guys who were over there last night are getting a little worried." Another pause. "You been there all morning?"

  "Well, yeah," he said. "Some shithead blocked me in."

  Then he remembered the horrible nightmare, in which he found those dead bodies. Including Steve's. But it was only a nightmare, he reminded himself as the blood drained from his face.

  "Well, I thought I'd check," Adam continued. His happy, lighthearted tone was getting on Daryl's nerves. "I'm at the Yaz. You sure you're okay?"

  "Yep. Listen, I gotta go. Say hi to your mom for me," he said, then hung up.

  I gotta find Steve, he thought.

  He went downstairs to the living room, where he saw Steve, two girls, and a boy named Colm lying dead.

  Daryl sat on the floor, staring down at his feet, thinking, thinking. "Je
sus Christ," he said to his dead friends. "How the hell did this happen?"

  He tried to remember the events of the previous night, his memories muddied with time and drugs. Grief lay somewhere deep in his throat, held back by the immediate need to cover his ass. He saw the drugs lying on the glass coffee table, which in itself was strange only because this was after the party, when everything should have been used up.

  Wait a minute, wasn't there a weird group that crashed the party? He remembered the strange punkers in leathers and chains who rode up on Harleys and crashed the party uninvited. He still didn't know how they got past the gate, which could only be opened from the house. This was one of the reasons Daryl wanted the party here, because he knew cops couldn't break the gate down without a warrant, and video cameras would let them know who was knocking at their door long before that happened.

  Steve tried to throw them out, but when they offered more drugs, he let them stay. About fifty people had arrived by then, and the newcomers began handing out vials of crack, for free, from a silk bag covered with hobbit runes and occult symbols and shit. The vials had black stoppers; other dealers used different-colored stoppers to label their product, but black was not one of the common ones. He remembered reaching for the bag, but had stumbled and fallen flat on his face. He had been so embarrassed from everyone laughing at him that he'd grabbed a six-pack of coolers and went outside to the gazebo. The idea was to return to the party after drinking the coolers. Instead, he had passed out.

  Gotta call the cops. Gotta clean this place up first.

  He grabbed a plastic bag and began cleaning, starting with the rocks and pipe on the coffee table. He searched everyone's pockets for more contraband, found an ounce of weed on Steve, pills of unknown type on the girls, and Tylenol 3's on Colm. He took three of the Tylenols for his headache, washing them down with warm cooler. Everything except alcohol went into the bag. He avoided looking into their faces, feeling like he was defiling them in some way.

  In Steve's room he found more rocks and a backup pipe, but since it had apparently never been used he left it in the desk.

  Sometime during the search of Steve's room, he remarked to himself that he should be feeling something, anything, right now. Those people are dead. I even knew some of them. He wasn't afraid of being arrested, but that was only because he was getting rid of any evidence that could be used against him. He felt no grief or even sadness over the loss of his friends. The codeine had kicked in, perhaps explaining some of this. He did feel a vague excitement, a thrill at outsmarting the police, but this was distant, clouded by the murk of a melting hangover.

  In the bathroom he began disposing of the evidence in the toilet. Rocks and powdered coke went in first, followed by the glass pipe, which he smashed on the toilet sides. Then the grass and the pills, everything in descending order of legal liability.

  About a grand in dope. Down the drain, he noted sadly as the swirling water sucked everything down. After everything had gone in, he flushed five more times, waiting for the tank to fill fully before flushing again, a technique he'd overheard his father discussing with a client.

  Satisfied he'd completely covered his tracks, he went into Steve's room and reluctantly dialed 911.

  Chapter Two

  Officer Swink pulled his police motorcycle onto the North Central Expressway from Interstate 635, cranking the throttle hard to pull into the bumper-to-bumper traffic. He had another hour to go on his shift, and his unspoken but strongly implied citation quota had not yet been reached this month.

  Before he had ridden a half mile, he saw a black VW beetle weaving down an on-ramp. The mere sight of the car was enough to get his dander up: the mag wheels and windows so tinted they looked spray-painted black were two strikes against the driver. The VW's driving habits didn't fare much better; the driver forced his way in front of a church bus, which screeched to a halt behind him. A textbook case of failure to yield. Swink was smiling so broadly his eyes nearly squeezed shut.

  The bug was four vehicles in front of him, but right now it might as well have been forty miles away. Traffic had stopped completely, and on either side of him, portable concrete walls, the bane of traffic law enforcement, blocked him behind a Le Sabre with a serious oil-burning problem. Knowing he couldn't pull the bug over immediately, he made a note of the ramp's location.

  Traffic crawled along for another ten minutes, then the retaining wall vanished, giving way to empty but unfinished pavement. Nothing his motorcycle couldn't handle, provided he watched for the protruding steel reinforcement rods still poking through the surface.

  His single red light flashing, Swink zipped in front of the church bus. A flock of children in the bus applauded him, along with the old man driving it. Apparently the violation had irritated more people than just Swink.

  Behind the bug, Swink tried to peer into the rear window. The oval was completely blackened; another clear violation of the law. Also, the bug's brake lights were not working.

  There's three.

  The bug did not immediately pull over onto the partially finished pavement, which irritated Swink further.

  He shouted over his PA: "PULL OVER NOW."

  The bug pulled over. Again, not as quickly as Swink would have liked. I'm going to enjoy this.

  Jackpot. The bug had an out-of-state tag. California. And it was one of those vanity plates, which Swink hated. It read, simply: REPO.

  As he pulled up behind he bug and stopped, flipping the stand out with a boot heel, he saw that he had misread the plate. It was actually an Oklahoma tag, IEX-1095, one he could call in. Given the black windows and the erratic driving, he smelled danger. Better call it in, he thought, reaching for the radio mike.

  When the dispatcher responded, Swink blinked his eyes. The plate now was from Texas, QUP10-1, with an expired sticker. Blood vessels swelled in Swink's temples. Then he called in that number.

  According to the dispatcher, the plate had never been issued by the state of Texas. Bogus. That's four. And this one's going to jail.

  Swink called in a backup, and the dispatcher told him one was a minute away. He glanced back to the northwest and saw a Caprice cruiser about two hundred yards away, stopped in traffic. Another fifty feet and he would have unfinished pavement to drive on.

  Swink approached the car, unsnapping his holster as he walked up to the window. He didn't like this; normally he'd be wearing a Kevlar vest, but he was sunburned from mowing the lawn the day before and had left it at home. He prayed he hadn't made a fatal mistake by doing so as he tapped on the driver's window.

  The window rolled down slowly. Inside, Swink saw nothing but darkness and wondered briefly if there was another window, or a curtain, or something. The blackness was absolute. He saw nothing inside, the driver, the steering wheel, not even the door locks.

  Swink was about to ask the driver to step out of the car when a deep, demonic voice rumbled from inside.

  "You're blind."

  Darkness poured from the car's interior, reaching out like a fist and wrapping itself around Swink's face; the cop staggered backward, held his hands up in front of his face, seeing nothing. Then he touched his eyes, which were open, but just not sending signals to his brain.

  As he reached for his gun, the darkness briefly robbed him of his breath. When he regained it, he screamed in rage as he listened to the bug speed away.

  On a late Monday afternoon, Paul Bendis left the Criminal Courts Building in downtown Dallas, near the historic West End District. He gave his briefcase a jaunty swing as he entered blazing sunlight, pleased with himself for helping his drug dealer walk away from an open-and-shut case of cocaine possession.

  It doesn't get much better than this, he thought. Who said lawyers were worthless?

  Earlier that day he had been a little down over the demise of his youth. Today I turn forty-five. Today is going to really suck, he remembered thinking when he got up that morning. He looked forward to the trial of Donald R. Wallbrook, a.k.a. Presto, with th
e same enthusiasm he reserved for root canal work. The best he had thought he could arrange for his client would be time in a minimum security prison, but something had told him to go to trial instead of plea bargain; he still couldn't put his finger on it, but despite what appeared to be good reason to bend over for the prosecutor, he fought it through.

  He glanced over at his client, who was walking out of the building with him, a tall man in his thirties who could pass, with the right clothing, as someone ten years younger. Presto was smiling in the bright Dallas sunlight, his smile a flashing billboard for Paul's abilities.

  Hell, yes, I'd be smiling, Paul thought. I should be smiling too, but . . .

  The case had been dismissed, but the police would be watching them both for some time. He didn't like the attention, but being the number one criminal lawyer in Dallas County had its drawbacks. Not just that, but Bendis specialized in drug-related charges, which annoyed the detective division even more. Big-time drug related charges, the kind Presto had just squirmed out of, by luck more than anything else.

  "That witness sure screwed things up," Presto said, still smiling.

  Paul grunted, a sound that meant either amusement or annoyance. "You could say that."

  In this case "screwed up" meant that the prosecutor's prize witness showed up in court so drunk he needed help getting onto the witness stand. Then he incorrectly identified Presto, pointing to the bailiff when asked if he saw the individual who sold him the coke.

  Paul was about to tell him that the screw-up in question was the only reason he was walking free, but that would have taken away from the aura of omnipotence he'd been cultivating for years.

  "Well, yeah, they didn't have much of a case anyway. Just a chance to let a rookie detective get his feet wet in the courts."

  Presto snorted back, suggesting he didn't fully believe Paul.

  "You just wait, buddy boy, they'll be after you again. Watch your ass a little more carefully. Use middlemen from now on. Get out of the line of fire."