The Last Handful of Clover - Book 2: Gifts Both Light and Dark

2.37 Moon Watcher with a Tire Iron

June 14, 4:00 am

 

Justin Kimball felt as if he was a malevolent virus, rushing through the veins of the unsuspecting city and looking for a vulnerable cell.

 

As he crept down 4th East, he kept out of the pools of light cast by the street lamps, slipping carefully but quickly between dark alleys and the shady pools under the big cottonwood trees that lined the quiet street. When a patrol car appeared, he hid behind a dumpster at the rear of a Chinese restaurant until it slid silently away, its lights revolving in the unearthly canopy of the high leaves.

 

Even with the threat of detection passing so near, Justin could do nothing but hug himself with delight.

 

The feel of Howard Gunderson's body was still a revelation to him. In his previous possessions of the boy, he had never taken the time to actually feel the joy that being alive again entailed. Since his death he had forgotten much of the wonder that came from breathing air, from actually feeling the hard pavement and the soft grasses. The sensual intensity of it only reminded him that being a ghost was a sad mockery of actually living.

 

When all this is over, he mused, I'm going to strip Howard's body naked, and we're going to float in the Great Salt Lake. We're going to climb peaks and feel the soft grass and the mountain leaves against our naked flesh. Or we're going to lie in the winter snows until every muscle aches.

 

It had all been so easy.

 

When he and Mattie left the cell, he knew that his new body had become more than just a set of clothes he was wearing. This flesh was now his, and the sound of Howard's protests and screams were already only delicious background music to all the new sensations running through him.

 

Mattie had handed him the guard's taser as they left the cell, and as they came to the end of the hall, he had seen the look of shock on the officer who had stayed behind at the duty desk. The guard looked at Mattie, in the body of his big colleague, and he only had the time to say, "What the fuck, Delgado?" before Mattie cracked him viciously across the forehead with the nightstick. The man had fallen so hard that Justin thought he might be dead already. But he had still been alive, and a good jolt from the taser was enough to bring the man around. As he moaned, Justin had pulled the cop into the corridor, despite his desperate attempts to grab the sides of the duty desk, and crawl under it.

 

His Princess was so sweet to him. When he had the officer clear, she handed him the nightstick. And then she just watched and clapped like a proud mama as he beat the cop to death. What they left in the hallway had no longer looked human. In fact, it was hard to imagine it had ever been alive.

 

Mattie looked at him, and he could see the pride in her eyes.

 

By using the guard's handcuffs, they had been able to pass the last checkpoint on the way out of the courthouse without a lot of fuss. The other guards appeared to know the big officer that Mattie was riding like a stallion, and didn't think twice about letting them pass without anything more than some small talk, and a scribbled signature on a prisoner transfer log.

 

Luckily, the guards hadn't looked down at Howard's shoes, or seen the bloody splatters on the cuffs of his orange pants.