Game (Jasper Dent #2)(29)

Now one day, into this perfection, into this natural world, there came a red robin. Red like a sunset, Jasper. A more beautiful bird you could not imagine, not with all the thinking in all the world. And the robin decided that it wanted to be like a crow. More than that, it wanted to be the Crow King.

And so the robin went off and the robin killed. It killed a great many birds. It slaughtered, bringing war where there had been peace.

And the Crow King said, “No, this is not for you. This is only for me.” And he hunted down the robin, and when he found him, he held down the robin and pierced its breast with his beak and drank from it, draining it until its red feathers turned white.

And that, Jasper, was the first dove. And this is why the dove is a bird of peace—because it knows better than to try to be otherwise.

“That’s… that’s a horrible story!” Connie said.

“That was my bedtime story,” Jazz said, without inflection.

Connie wrapped her arms around him and Jazz let her and then—thankfully—he fell asleep, just like a little boy who’s been read to by his father.





CHAPTER 14


Lips on his

(oh, yes)

shoulder and trailing a line of cool heat (oh)

down farther and his fingers touch something so soft and familiar (there, touch me there)

and also somehow unknown and a groan

his groan?

or

hers?

He reaches out, back, around

(Oh, yes)

and opens his mouth

and licks




He awoke to find himself pressed tightly against Connie, terrified and horrified and aroused all at once. She was awake, too, whether because of him or not he didn’t know, but he kissed her and she kissed back just as urgently and fumbled with the drawstring on his pajama bottoms and reached for him there, and he would have let her, he needed to let her, but at the last minute he drew in a breath and —like cutting— Oh, yes, just touch— he pulled back, pulled away, shoving Connie more violently than he’d intended.

Both dreams. Both of them at once— He rolled out of bed, arms flailing, smacking into the nightstand, pulling the alarm clock and the phone down to the floor with him.

Both of them. Killing and sex and— “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Sorry’s not enough. Never enough. Never, ever…

Connie crawled over from her side of the bed to look down at him, her hair covered by the satin bonnet she wore to sleep. In the murky light that bled through the thin curtains, she was chocolate cream and he wanted to devour every last inch of her, wanted to run his tongue over her, wanted to sink his teeth into her and suck out everything of her, ingest it into him.

No. No! Stop it! That’s crazy.

Take it, Jasper, Billy cooed. Take her. She’s yours. She’s your prospect. This is what you’ve been waiting for. And best of all, Jasper? Best of all is that she’s been waiting for it, too.

Not true. He couldn’t believe it was true.

But then there was the naked lust, the yearning in Connie’s eyes, in the parting of her lips, in her pose on the bed. It was less than human, this electricity between them. It was primal, as it was meant to be, as it should be.

That’s when it’s best, Jasper. When they come to you. When they want it as badly as you want to give it.

“Why are you afraid?” Connie whispered, and her voice tasted like warm pie. “Why are you so afraid of me?”

“I’m not afraid of you.” And he wasn’t. Jazz was afraid only of himself.

“I know it isn’t easy,” she said. “I know it’s complicated for you. But this—this thing, this moment—this is supposed to be easy. So easy.”

“We can’t.”

“I brought condoms,” she said, the words an electric prod to his heart. “I thought… I knew we’d be alone here.”

Jazz closed his eyes. It was as though he could see the future. But not just one future. He could see so many of them. He could see himself, happy, with Connie, two normal people living normal lives, drawn closer together and connected by their shared intimacy, the way it was supposed to work, the way it was supposed to be.

But he could also see…

But here’s the thing, Jasper, Billy’s voice purred, speaking from the last time he’d spoken to his father, at Wammaket State Penitentiary. I bet you’re a nice, responsible kid, ’cause I raised you that way, but are you always the one buyin’ the rubbers? Hmm? Or maybe she’s on that pill? ’Cause you can’t always trust ’em, Jasper. You look at them rubbers real close-like, see? You watch her take that pill, Jasper. Hell (and here Billy had roared with laughter), how you think you was born?

He could also see sex as the ignition moment, the fulcrum upon which his own career of serial murder would lever.

None of Billy’s victims had been black. There had been Latinas and Asians and a great profusion of white girls, but not a single African American. Jazz thought that made Connie safe.

He’d thought that… until now.

Now he was no longer certain.

He wanted her so badly. And was that because he was a boy and she was a girl and they were in love and that’s how it was supposed to work?

Or was it because the deepest part of him, the Billy part of him, champed at the bit, strained against its tether, eager and desperate for freedom, to begin what it had been born and made to do?