Bleak History Read Free Page A

always seemed two weeks overdue for a haircut; brittle blue eyes; a man not quite thirty, in an old Army Rangers jacket, jeans, big black boots. Pretty much the same outfit most anytime, though Bleak changed the tees under the jacket. Bleak had a collection of fading rock-band T-shirts. Today he wore the Dictators.
    The drinkers in the bar didn't take much notice. Yankee Hank's was decorated with New York Yankees paraphernalia—dusty jerseys, fading autographed balls, curling baseball cards—and if you were a Yankees fan, these days, you pretty much stayed drunk, either because they were doing great or doing badly, depending on what week it was. The drinkers were slurring drunk, not sodden drunk, but they didn't notice much except the little drama on the sports channel.
    As Bleak walked by, Seamus called out, “Thinking of starting up our softball team, this summer, Gabe, you in?”
    “Sure, man, if I can pitch!”
    Seamus gave him an affirming wink and Bleak strode on to the back room, empty except for Yankees posters and neon beer signs, two large red-felt pool tables, and restroom entrances in the farther wall. He toyed with the idea of going into the men's restroom, waiting his tracker out. But if she was really hunting him, she wouldn't let the men's room sign stop her.
    He walked over to the other side of a pool table, turned toward the door, hesitated there, trying to think it through. If she wasn't Shadow Community, who was she? She could be a fed. Maybe Central Containment.
    Bleak decided he wanted to know whom she was working for. And what the instrument in her hand was.
    He couldn't see her, now, because she'd lost sight of him. He only had sight of her, psychically, when she had him in sight. He waited.
    The energy bullet had lost some of its power through the attrition of time, but it was still hot in his hand. Holding it there for that long, he might get a slight burn on his skin. Still, he pulsed a little more  power into it, building it up to full strength.
    Over the noise from a television ad for a men's perfume absolutely guaranteed to attract women, he heard Seamus ask someone what he could get for them. It was her. Bleak thought she said a glass of chardonnay, but he couldn't hear it clearly, then she asked a muffled question, and Seamus said, “The ladies' is back there, miss.”
    She was still tracking him. But whoever she was, she was staying undercover about it.
    His grip tightened around the energy bullet, compressing its charge a little more. But he kept it out of sight below the edge of a pool table.
    She walked in, then, a pale woman with bobbed raven hair; she wore a conservative dove-gray dress with a matching jacket, red pumps, matching red-leather purse over her left shoulder, nails the same color. An expression you'd expect on a prosecuting attorney added hardness to an otherwise appealing, heart-shaped face; pursed full lips. Her paleness wasn't unhealthy, it was like something he'd seen in Renaissance paintings. She was a head shorter than Bleak—but there was no sense that she was intimidated. She stopped just inside the billiard room, standing there with her feet well apart. He noticed she had her purse open. He could just make out the top of a gun butt in there. In her right hand was what looked like one of those devices carpenters use to find metal studs hidden in the walls. Only it was more complicated looking, sleeker. And as she came closer, she held it low enough so that he could see its little LCD screen. Where a tiny red arrow was pointing right at Bleak.
    The gun butt convinced Bleak there was no use in playing it cute. “It'd be better if you left that gun in your purse, miss,” he warned, keeping his voice gentle but raising his hand, opening his fingers enough so she could see the energy bullet shifting through orange, red, purple, violet, incandescent blue, yellow; back to orange, red, purple. “And that other thing you have pointed at me—mind telling me what it is?