Dust to Dust Read online

  Here, glass and masonry and more lay strewn everywhere.

  Some people were staggering around in a daze, others were down, some cut, some screaming. Then came another blast of breaking glass.

  This time, it wasn’t the earth taking vengeance.

  It was a group of hoods.

  How anyone had recovered quickly enough from an earthquake to start thinking of looting, Melanie didn’t know.

  But just as natural disaster brought out the best in some people, it brought out the worst in others.

  She saw a group of six thugs making for an antique jewelry shop. They were an odd group; two were preppy looking, in cardigans and button-down shirts, another wore a tie-dyed T-shirt, and three were in hooded sweatshirts. It was Wall Street meets Haight-Ashbury meets Harlem.

  A moment after they disappeared inside, she heard a cry and went running toward the shop herself. There was a fissure right in front of the doorway, with steam escaping, and for a moment she thought that it took on substance and oozed from the ground, coalescing into something large and dark, elusive and ever-changing as it emerged from the miasma…. It was just steam, she told herself. And indeed, as she stood there, it rose and dissipated, just like steam always did.

  Another scream startled her from her bizarre reflection.

  She knew both Mr. Delancy, the proprietor, and Viv Larson, his salesgirl, and the minute she stepped inside she saw them being attacked.

  “Stop it!” Melanie shouted.

  Given the mayhem on the streets, she was surprised that they not only heard her but, to her amazement, turned to look at her.

  “Lookit the little snow queen, trying to stop us, Bo,” one of them said. He had a scraggly beard, scaly-looking skin, and an odor that drifted all the way over to where she stood in the doorway.

  Bo was apparently the tall, broad-shouldered black man—wearing a tie—who started to laugh as he came toward her.

  “Let’s take the little snow queen here into the back. The old guy, he’s no use. But we got ourselves two little chickees, and with the world goin’ to hell, everyone will be far too busy to notice a few screams from the back room. Get her, Nicky. Go on and get her.”

  The scaly-skinned thug started toward her.

  “Don’t even think about it,” she said quietly, and took a single step toward him. “You’re going to let those nice people go and get the hell out of here. And I suggest you do it really quickly, because the police will have things under control in a matter of minutes.”

  All six men began to laugh.

  Okay, so she doubted herself that the police would be in control that quickly.

  “Melanie, go. Run,” Mr. Delancy croaked.

  “Nicky, just grab the bitch and shut her up,” Bo snapped.

  Nicky started toward her again, and she got ready to take him on.

  Suddenly another voice sounded from the doorway. “Hey!”

  Melanie turned to see a man standing there. He had striking features. The kind of face that would have been at home in a Van Dyck painting. Like a cavalier. Tall and lean, with long, very dark hair. He was in jeans and a tailored shirt, hands in his pockets, like a man who had just been out for a casual evening. As she had been.

  He was certainly brave enough, she thought. He didn’t look like the type who could race in like a movie hero and fistfight his way through a crowd. His features, however, were set in an expression that made her feel that he might be extremely useful in a fight.

  “What’s going on here?” he demanded.

  “Hey, dude,” Bo said. “We’re just conducting a little business, so why don’t you run on home and leave us to it?”

  “Hey, dude,” the new arrival said, “you need to let these people go. Now,” the man said calmly.

  Bo ignored him as he wrapped his long fingers around Viv’s neck. With his other hand he scooped some jewelry out of a showcase that had smashed glass everywhere.

  As he pocketed the jewels, Viv stared at Melanie imploringly.

  “I’m out of here. Nicky, you guys, handle these jokers,” Bo said, then turned to leave through the back alley, dragging Viv with him.

  Nicky grinned, a malicious twist of his lips.

  The man by his side picked up a nineteenth-century rum bottle and cracked the neck on one of the showcases, squaring his shoulders and staring toward the door with amusement in his eyes.

  Mel saw one of the men halfheartedly strangling old Mr. Delancy as Bo left with Viv, and she wasn’t certain what to do.

  “I’ve got this. You call the police after the one with the girl,” the stranger said to her, as, with an almost casual air, he started past her. The man with the broken bottle stepped forward with amusement, as if taking the newcomer down was going to be like swatting a fly.

  “No!” she cried, moving closer.

  But to her amazement, the newcomer moved with the speed of lightning.

  So fast, in fact, that she wasn’t sure exactly what she saw.

  One minute the thug was coming for him, grinning as he prepared to take on the stranger, and the next…he was on the ground, in the fetal position, groaning, and the stranger was heading for the man attacking Mr. Delancy.

  She tore past them, through the back door, ran through the alley to the street and looked around. Everyone she saw appeared to be in shock.

  Melanie ran up to a man in a waiter’s shirt who was standing by a car, staring in shock at the pole that had crashed down on it. She tapped him on the shoulder. “Did you see a tall black man, dragging a woman, come by here?”

  “Pardon?” he said, looking at her as if she had just woken him up.

  She heard a scream from down the street and recognized the voice as Viv’s.

  “Never mind!” she said, as she raced away down Santa Monica. Everyone she saw seemed lost. Even the cops, trying to control the panic, wouldn’t be any help now. They were in the midst of Bedlam, and even if they understood her if she tried to explain, she wasn’t sure they would care about one woman when it seemed that the whole world had gone mad.

  She kept running.

  Bo could move amazingly swiftly, considering the fact that he was dragging someone along with him and was running through a crowd.

  She nearly fell over a man who was sprawled on the ground in front of a T-shirt shop. A newly purchased sub sandwich lay squashed atop him as people rushed past, trying to get away from the chaos.

  Struggling against the rush of people who seemed as crazed as stampeding cows, she tried to get him to his feet.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, knowing that all the while, Bo was getting away.

  “Guy…decked me. He had a girl…she was screaming…I tried…”

  She actually shook him to get him to focus, then felt guilty. He’d been one of the good ones. A decent human being. He’d tried to help.

  “Listen to me. I need to find that guy before he hurts that girl. Are you all right now? Can you stand?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Lady, don’t you go getting involved. You’ll get yourself killed. Get a cop. Tell him that bastard kept going down Santa Monica. Like toward the cemetery.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t you go after him. He’s an animal!” the man called as she ran in the direction of the cemetery.

  “Thanks! Take care of yourself!” she yelled back and kept running.

  Near the cemetery, the world seemed far more quiet. There weren’t any restaurants and bars near the entrance, only a lot of manufacturing. The cemetery itself was gorgeous and a huge tourist attraction by day. People loved celebrities, dead or alive. Sometimes, at night, they showed old movies on the outside walls of the mausoleum. The living picnicked on an expanse of grass where no interments had yet taken place. It sounded bizarre, but Melanie thought that if she’d been a star and interred in the mausoleum, it would be kind of cool to know that her living celluloid self might still be enjoyed right outside. The owner believed in the living recognizing the dead, but also finding
life and peace among them; the Mexican Day of the Dead was celebrated there in a big way.

  Because of its distance from the heart of the tourist area, there had been fewer cars in the area, and apparently no collisions. The pavement was ripped and buckled, but there was only one car parked, and no one near it. All the businesses were closed.

  Residents, if there were any, remained inside.

  The street lamps were all tilted at odd angles, and none of them were lit.

  The world was very dark.

  She kept running, listening as she did so, heading toward the entrance to the cemetery. Then she paused, standing still in the darkness.

  The noise—the sirens, the car horns, the screams and shouts of the people caught in the congested tourist areas—seemed to fade. She wasn’t sure where her quarry had gone.

  Viv, scream, make a noise, she thought, then listened hard.

  Then she thanked God for the darkness and all but flattened herself against a wall as two of the sweat-shirted thugs raced by her, so close that she could have reached out and touched them.

  They were headed not for the main gate of the cemetery, she realized, but for a street nearby.

  She rushed after them and was in time to see them scaling the wall outside a business attached to the cemetery whose sign boasted Mortuary Monuments. Beneath, in smaller letters, it advertised Residents’ Discounts!

  Melanie looked at the wall.

  She hadn’t dressed for climbing.

  Oh, well.

  Despite her silk halter top, linen pants and low-heeled sandals, she jumped, then dug for finger-and toeholds, and crawled over.

  The darkness on the other side was almost total.

  In the shadows, it appeared as if she had entered a bizarre realm of the dead. Everything the place offered was displayed in the large, walled-in yard.

  And this being L.A., where the dead were often far more famous than the living, the wares tended toward the elaborate.

  Marble angels with folded wings greeted her in their forlorn wait to stand guard over the dead.

  The monuments, most of them lying askew in the aftermath of the quake, were arranged along a series of winding paths. There were huge marble sarcophagi, along with angels, cherubs, saints and crosses, along with simpler headstones and plaques. Melanie was certain none of them were cheap, but for those in the agony of loss, eager to honor those loved ones who had gone before them, price was undoubtedly no object.

  She shivered suddenly, as she felt an odd chill in the air. For a moment, she thought she was in the realm of the damned, hell itself, as if the earthquake had opened a rift in the fabric of the world and tumbled these silent monuments into a more fitting world.

  She used her hands to guide her in the dark, her eyes drawn to marble angels that lay open-eyed and eerie against weeping cherubs.

  She had never been here before, and she tried to gauge her progress through the narrow alleys of this bizarre kingdom of stone.

  She heard a thump and went still. Someone had just entered the yard behind her, and that someone was moving silently, stealthily—and steadily—in her direction.

  From somewhere ahead she heard a sound, like a gasp, followed by a choked-out scream, feminine and terrified.

  Viv.

  She hurried in that direction, then froze, as a shadow—dark, tall, moving like the wind—rushed up on her heels. She barely had time to dodge to one side, and even so, he nearly touched her as he raced by.

  She followed as quickly as she could and found herself near a display mausoleum, an example of what the wealthy dead could attain. Stained-glass windows caught what few streaks of moonlight there were and cast a not-quite-earthly glow. It was strange, but beautiful, with gargoyles reminiscent of Notre Dame sitting above the hardwood door, behind an iron railing. Bas-relief saints carried the splendor of the stained glass on their shoulders.

  The mysterious man who’d brushed past her in the dark was nowhere to be seen.

  The mausoleum door was open to the night, and a match flickered within, casting enough light for her to briefly glimpse the three men and the lone woman inside.

  Nicky, bleeding, his eyes blackened, was arguing with Bo.

  Who still held Viv.

  “Let the girl go, Bo. You’ve got the diamonds, so let’s get out of here before that killing machine comes after us!”

  “Asswipe!” Bo raged. “The girl is mine, and there’s plenty of time now for a little fun. You want to run like a dog with your tail between your legs, fine, get the hell out of here. How the hell you were beaten by that scrawny fucker, I’ll never know. Now quit whining like a two-year-old. We’ve got the goods and the girl, and this is a fucking empty tomb in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night after an earthquake. Who the hell is going to find us here? What the hell, you chicken-liver. Fuck you, run!”

  Nicky never had a chance to reply.

  Something dark loomed out of nowhere, blocking Melanie’s view into the mausoleum.

  Then Nicky came flying out, as if he were a sack of dry leaves tossed into the wind, and crashed to the ground in a motionless heap.

  Melanie burst into a run when she heard another terrified shriek tear from Viv’s throat.

  But as she neared the mausoleum, Bo and the stranger who had appeared at the shop suddenly came bursting out of it together, locked in a deadly tangle of arms and legs, nearly knocking Melanie over.

  She ignored them, aware that there was still another man in the tomb with Viv.

  “I’m sorry,” he was saying to the terrified woman. “I’m sorry, but I have to…I mean, you’re a witness,” he told her.

  He truly sounded miserable.

  Too bad.

  Melanie attacked.

  He had a knife out, intending to stab Viv, who had been pressed back against the empty sarcophagus displayed in the would-be tomb. She was desperately clutching the marble.

  Melanie threw herself straight at the attacker’s back. He howled, grabbing at her and taking his attention off Viv.

  “Run!” Melanie commanded the other woman, who wasted no time before obeying.

  The thug was huge. Heavily muscled. He dislodged Melanie’s hold, and she leapt away from him as he swiped at her with the knife. She needed more room to maneuver, she realized.

  The second Viv was out the door, Mel backed out of the mausoleum herself, the thug following her.

  She could hear thrashing around her, and realized Bo and the stranger were still locked in deadly combat.

  This time, when the man with the knife made a leap for her, she caught his arm and nearly broke it. The knife flew from his grasp, and he shrieked in fury, lunging toward her again.

  She sidestepped, but he rallied, charging her like a bull.

  Again, she used evasive tactics, and he went crashing into the arms of a winged cherub.

  She turned around, ready to finish him while he was still staggering from the impact, but as she started to move, Bo’s massive body suddenly came flying through the dark night air, landing before her in a heap.

  A broken heap.

  He groaned, barely alive.

  His friend ran at Melanie. This time, she stood her ground, feeling the night, feeling the rush of wind as her attacker ran at her.

  She started to spin, raising an arm, and as he neared her, she struck.

  He went flying back, stunned and shaking his head, like a boxer who had been at the wrong end of a strong right hook.

  He started toward her again, but this time he never reached her.

  The stranger stepped in front of her, reached out and grabbed the man, and spun him around. He hardly seemed to be expending any effort, but as she watched, her attacker was lifted, tossed high into the air and left to fall.

  He crashed down on top of Bo, who cried out in agony.

  Melanie found herself staring at the stranger and realized she had been right all along. He was good to have around in a fight.

  His midnight-dark hair was tou
sled, and beneath the strands that lay over his forehead, she saw that his eyes were dark as coal. His face was so chiseled that it belonged on a bust of a Grecian war hero.

  And he was barely breathing hard. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Are you?” she demanded in return.

  He grinned crookedly and nodded.

  “The shop owner?” she asked. “Mr. Delancy.”

  “He’s fine,” he told her. “And the girl?”

  “She ran.”

  “The streets are still chaos.”

  “She’ll be fine. There really aren’t that many Bos out tonight.”

  “Don’t kid yourself. There will be,” he said.

  She nodded, becoming aware of sirens in the distance again.

  In the distance…and coming closer.

  She stared, assessing him. “Who are you?” she demanded.

  He inhaled, arched a brow slowly. And his wary grin deepened.

  “I have a better question,” he said softly to her. “What are you?”

  The sirens were almost deafening now. They took another heartbeat to stare at each other, then turned and ran in opposite directions.

  2

  He was there again.

  Among the dead.

  The maze of paths through the catacombs was becoming familiar, though he remained at a loss as to why he found himself walking those paths again and again.

  He did not fear the dead. He pitied them and, in a melancholy way, in these dark regions of his mind, he envied them. He knew there was more to what the subconscious mind saw than the world accepted. And it wasn’t the dead who frightened him but the living. The living had free will, and free will allowed for choices, for good and evil. The good offered no harm to others, indeed, would reach out to help another. The evil flourished on the pain of others; they were selfish, seeking their own pleasure above all else. Evil could be minor, manifested in such things as shoplifting and petty theft. That demonstrated the evil of selfishness, but no one was physically harmed. True evil found expression in so many ways in so many societies. He was certain that throughout history, certain inquisitors, witch-finder generals and their ilk, sanctioned by cross and king, had been genuinely evil. They had enjoyed their tasks.