Wolf Flow Read Online Free PDF Page B

stood in the doorway, with her hand still on the light switch. Just standing and looking, her bright red mouth coming open, the strap of her purse sliding off the shoulder of the white acrylic fur jacket. She blinked, her forehead creasing into lines. Trying to figure it out, what she was seeing. Or even to see it all. It was as if the messages coming up her optic nerves had to slog through a chemical bog to get into her brain.
        The place was trashed. Totally fucking ruined -that one word ping-ponged around inside her head. The furniture was overturned, except for the big Italian leather sofa she and Mike had had to go all the way up to Seattle to find, and that had been slashed open with a knife; the butter-soft cushions had mouths now, grinning and vomiting up white cotton stuffing.
        One of the torcheres had been bent double, as though somebody had snapped it across his knee, then thrown it out into the middle of the floor, its cord trailing behind it. On the far wall, by the dining room doorway, the Warhol Mao, and the Liz, that Mike had had before she had hooked up with him, had the glass smashed from the chrome frames and the prints cut into dangling ribbons.
        She took a step into the apartment, looking at the rubble strewn across the floor, the sparkling shards of glass, the books broken-backed and flopped onto their faces.
        "Mike…?" she called.
        There was no answer from the bedroom or from anywhere else in the empty apartment.
        "Shit…" A whisper, her eyes grown wide. The edge of panic had cut through the fog. Her heart sped inside her.
        Then she turned and saw on the wall behind her, near the door, the caved-in place in the plaster, just the size of a man's face. A wash of dried blood smeared down the wall, broken by a red handprint.
        
***
        
        It was kind of funny to picture her up there, stumbling into the middle of their handiwork.
        "Hey-what do you think?" Charlie smiled and nodded toward the windshield, and beyond to the lit window in the apartment building. He nudged Aitch with the point of his elbow. "Think I should pick up on that action? Little Miss Bimbo up there? She's going to be awfully lonely now."
        Aitch gave him a disgusted look. He shook his head, as if he couldn't believe he'd heard what Charlie had said. "Come on. Let's get out of here."
         Now he wanted to go. Just when things were getting good. Who knew, maybe Mike's girlfriend-what was her name? Something with an L-maybe she was about to come running out of the building, all freaked out. That'd be funny, too.
        He turned the key in the ignition. Still, it'd be worth remembering this address. He wasn't so hung up on those ballet types that he couldn't try a hit of something else.
        

FOUR
        
        Something had happened, and he could move. He could walk.
         This is dreaming -the thought slid through Mike's head, the whisper of his own voice inside himself. The space around him had become suffused with blue light, as though the roof and the floors above had melted away, letting the moon wash up against the walls. He lifted his head and looked, but didn't see the night sky. Instead, he saw a ceiling of carved beams intersecting with one another, forming squares and triangles and the shape of a six-pointed star right in the center. The white plaster between, stencilled with vines, shone luminous. From the center star hung a chandelier, unlit; the dark pieces of glass chimed like small bells as a current of air touched them.
        He looked down at his hands, turning them over to see the palms. They seemed almost translucent, as though he could discern the veins and tendons, the perfect, undamaged workings inside. There was a smear of blood across his right palm; he rubbed it with the thumb of his other hand, then closed both hands tight, the lingers curling into the fists.
        The right hand and arm had healed;