Nightjack by Tom Piccirilli Page A

kill someone with his bare hands. He’d been amused and revolted at how easy it actually proved to be. The simple killing strokes. Forearm to the throat. Heel of the palm to the sternum. The strangler’s hands holding on. Easing the blade in under the heart. Incisive.
    When Pace looked at P.I. Sam Smith again, the man had blood leaking from the corner of his mouth. Sam didn’t seem to be in any pain as he coughed and brought up black fluid that dripped down his chin. He gasped twice, his lungs bubbling, and then his head sank back against the edge of the couch and the little plastic wrapper around his hat flopped off.
    Pace reached over and put a hand to Sam Smith’s chest but there was no movement.
    Then Pace was alone on the love seat, with the laptop on his knees.
    That’s right, he thought, Sam Smith had been murdered three weeks after taking the job from William Pacella. He was found shot to death in his office, a couple of months after he started investigating the Ganucci family’s possible connection to the death of Jane Pacella.
    The screen had more information about Pythos and Pace scanned it quickly, learning a little more about the archeological digs that had gone on, what might be expected at Greek shrines. It felt as if time was running out, and he tried to absorb what he could, even though the facts kept skittering away from him.
    Pace glanced up and saw Pia gliding down the stairs, pixie arms out and waving as if she might fly. Hayden slid along the rail in perfect time with her. Dr. Brandt was making her angry mama face as she followed, stomping down stair by stair.
    Faust stepped from the shadows at the bottom of the stairwell, there the whole time.
    “A laptop, Will? Where did you get that?” Dr. Brandt asked.
    “I found it.”
    He looked over at the embroidered pillows .
    Abide with me: fast falls the eventide.
    “You’ve been on the Internet?”
    “Yes.”
    “Doing what?”
    “Putting together the pieces.”
    “Good, I’m glad. Which pieces?”
    That stopped him.
    Which pieces. It was a good question. Were they big ones or small, when you got right down to it? Important or merely more subterfuge that, in the end, despite all the effort and struggle, would mean nothing to anyone? Pace didn’t know.
    “There’s six hundred pounds on a barbell up there,” Pia said. “Can you really bench that much?”
    “No,” Pace told her. “Not a chance.”
    Hayden let out a high-pitched titter. It sounded near-hysterical and he knew it did so he snapped his jaws shut. He waited a second and said, “I think you can. I think Jack can do almost anything.”
    “Our father who art invincible,” Faust said.
    You didn’t invoke the names of the dark gods unless you were willing to pay a price.
    Dr. Brandt stepped in close, her lips almost at Pace’s ear. It wasn’t a whisper, but something softer and more luxurious, throaty with a heavy hint of promise. The muscles in his belly rippled.
    “Vindi said we’d been lovers,” he told her.
    “Ooooh,” Pia said, jumping onto the couch, legs crossed, arm braced on her knee with her hand up like she was holding a glass of champagne. “Do tell.”
    “Is it true?” he asked.
    “Yeah,” Pia chimed. “Is it?”
    Hayden and Faust and everybody else, all the ghosts hiding in the house, were eager for an answer.
    Maureen Brandt glared at a point somewhere far behind Pace. A lot of patients used to do this sort of thing on the ward, staring so deeply into something that they went all the way into its atomic structure, watching molecular chains, electron clouds, and quarks leaping across higher quantum energy states.
    Why so pale and wan, fond lover? Prithee, why so pale ?
    She had found photos upstairs. There were Jane and Pacella sitting out on the beach, the camera on a timer and going off two seconds before they were ready. Both of them starting to smile but not quite there yet. In the next photo they’d been grinning two seconds too long, happy