In This Skin Read Free

added, ”Jessica.” He gunned the engine and turned the car in the vast wasteland of the lot, the lights sweeping into the distance to fall on derelict factories behind razor wire.
        ”I know what it is.”She spoke gently. ”You've just split up with someone. You're on the rebound, aren't you?”
        Don't stare in the rearview, Benedict; just drive away.
        ”The rebound?”
        ”Yep,”she said. ”She dumped you-or you dumped her, but anyway you're feeling all chewed up inside. Am I wrong?”
        He glanced in the rearview.
        A figure ran through the near darkness in front of the Luxor, then threw itself down on the steps as if worshipping there. The white marble made the figure stand out. He could have been praying to the Egyptian art-deco jackals that adorned slabs over the entrance door.
        ”Am I right or am I wrong?”Jessica persisted. ”You've just split with a girlfriend? Or is it a wife? Hey! What's wrong with you?”
        ”Stay here.”He stopped the car hard, throwing the girl forward; the seatbelt dug between her full breasts.
        ”Benedict, what's happening?”Now she did sound scared. ”Where are you going?”
        He turned off the engine, then, unbuckling his seatbelt, he bailed out through the door and ran back to the Luxor, which gleamed whitely in the starlight just fifty yards away.
        Christ knew he wasn't thinking straight. He saw the figure on the steps as Mariah Lee. He could see her blond hair catching the distant streetlights. Where the hell had she been these last ten years? But this did make a weird kind of sense; there's symmetry here. Logic-a weird logic at that-told him that if Mariah was going to return it would be one decade to the day after she had vanished.
        He started calling, ”Mariah… Mariah?”
        Then the figure turned to glare at him, half crouching in an ape posture on the steps.
        Benedict stopped. His stomach muscles hurt like someone had rammed a fist into him. He could hardly breathe. The figure opened its mouth and cried out. A raw animal sound that turned Benedict's blood cold.
        ”Wh-war-wuu-or! I! I-I-I!”
        The figure wasn't Mariah. Didn't even look like Mariah. There on the steps, dripping blood onto white marble, was a young guy A young guy who'd taken a hell of a beating. His nose had become a bloody mass. His lips and eyebrows were cut. One eye had closed up into a glistening strip that sickened Benedict to even look at it. The guy lacked the energy to climb to his feet. Benedict leaned forward, his hands out at either side to show that he meant no harm.
        ”Wha! N-n… doh-don't! I-I-I can't t-take any m-more. Y-y-you…
        M-m-wurrrr-”
        The guy's stammer had the rapidity and violence of a machine gun-fragments of words exploded from his bloodied lips. The guy was a wreck; panting, trembling, hands shaking. And that stammer? There was a brittle energy that made you think it would rise into a wailing scream.
        ”Hey, take it easy, buddy. You need someone to take a look at those cuts.”
        The guy put his hands up over his face as if to protect himself from a fresh assault.
        ”My name's Benedict. My car's just across there. I can take you to-”
        ”Sh-shur-rayyy!!”
        Benedict reeled back as the guy twisted around to scramble on all fours up the steps before rising to two feet. He ran with a furious energy, arms working as if to claw himself through the air with his hands.
        ”Hey wait!”Benedict called but the man was gone, running down the side of the Luxor and into bushes that choked the bank of the river as it cut a glistening line behind the building. He listened for a moment, but the crash of bushes as the guy pelted through them soon dwindled to silence.
        Benedict stood alone in silence on the old Luxor steps. The implacable face of the building stared him down. Above,