Catskinner's Book (The Book Of Lost Doors) Read Free Page A

then. Across the street, down an alley, over a fence, down another alley, so fast that I wasn't sure where we were until he slowed down and stepped out onto a street I knew, a couple of miles from the Italian restaurant. And then—just like that—he let go of me and I was walking on my own again. I wasn't tired or sweaty or even breathing hard. I was hungry, though. Ravenous.
    Catskinner gets the energy to move my body the same place I do, from the chemical energy stored in my body fat, and this little job had probably burned a thousand calories.  Hence the candy bars.
    There was a bus stop on the corner, I walked down there and waited for the bus.
    Yeah, I know. A contract killer taking the city bus as a getaway vehicle from the scene of a multiple homicide sounds pretty crazy, right?  
    In the first place, though, no one was going to expect me to flee on foot, and in the even firster place if they did they'd concentrate their search much too close to the scene—Catskinner can cover ground in a way that no police department in the world is prepared to believe. Cabs keep records, and stolen cars can be traced. The bus is a very anonymous way to leave a murder scene—not that I'm advocating murder, mind you. It's not a business that suits everybody.
    Besides, there are any number of well-paid expert witnesses willing to testify that I am crazy. Some of whom still have the scars to prove it.
    So I sat on a bench with an ad for a pawn shop and ate chocolate for a while. It was a nice evening for sitting on a bench and watching the traffic go by. I did a little discrete checking for blood on my hands and clothes. Didn't see any. Catskinner is a very neat monster. I didn't see a single emergency vehicle go by. Some sirens, but they were far away. The bus rumbled up and I took it close enough to home to walk the rest of the way.
    I could have stopped by Victor's office and reported the success of the job—I don't believe he has actually slept for several years—but I didn't feel like it. He'd assume everything went well unless he read otherwise in the on-line papers in the morning.
    I went straight upstairs. I wanted to watch TV, maybe find some cartoons where the violence didn't leave scars and everything turned out okay in the end.
    The last kill was staying with me, little details coming up every time I tried to close my eyes. That man looked at me, clutching his ruined hand and knowing that he was facing something he could not understand, knowing that he was going to die. He looked at me, and I wasn't there. There was nothing human in my eyes, only Catskinner's hungry alien intelligence. I saw what he saw, mirrored in his dying eyes, a man-shaped hole in the world.
    Maybe he was a mafia enforcer, maybe he was a really bad man. But he had been a man, a human being, and he was dead because something dark and cold and unnatural had used my body as a conduit to reach down onto this Earth and snuff out his life.
    Guilt makes me angry. I never asked to be born, never asked to be made into what I am. I'd suggest you take it up with my parents, but they're dead and I devoutly pray that they are suffering more in hell than anything I could ever do to them.
    Redemption is costly. Whiskey, on the other hand, is cheap. I took a couple of shots and thought about something else. Bunny rabbits. Puppy dogs. Pretty girls.
    Anther couple of shots and I was able to sleep.
     

Chapter Two
    “nature abhors a vacuum. the feeling is mutual.”
    The next morning—Friday, actually—I woke up hungry. I usually do on days after Catskinner's been active. I took a shower and checked myself over for injuries. Sometimes they don't show up right away, but there was nothing. None of the men last night had so much as touched me.
    When I got out of the shower, my coffeepot had finished gurgling, so I poured a cup and made breakfast. Eggs and cheese and toast. I took it out on the back fire escape and ate it while watching the world wake up, well,