Last Light (Novella) Read Free Page B

do. But what will you tell me next—that you’ve saved yourself for me all these years, that you’ve been as celibate as a monk? A guy who looks like you, a babe magnet?”
    He regarded her with grave seriousness, met her eyes and did not look away. “Not at all. There have been women. I’ve been fond of all those girls, loved one. But never loved one enough. Never had that…electrifying moment, though I’ve hoped for it. I’ll promise you this—take me seriously, give me a chance, more dates than just this one, and I won’t pressure you to be intimate, not once, never. If that happens, it’ll be when you want it to. Whether it takes a year, longer, I don’t care. Your company, companionship, the sight of you—that’ll be enough for me until it’s not enough for you.”
    He had rendered her speechless. Any guy she’d ever known would have delivered that pitch in such a way that insincerity would have dripped from every word. But from Rainer, it sounded as genuine as an innocent child’s pledge of fealty to a friend. When she found her voice, she said, “I’m not used to conversations like this, moving this fast. I’m not sure about the territory.”
    “Makani, do you believe in
hopena
?”
    “Destiny?” She thought of the unsought and burdensome gift that fate—or something in its guise—had bestowed upon her. “Have to say, I’ve had reason to wonder about it.”
    “Have you?”
    “Who hasn’t? Sometimes, it seems, things happen for no reason. You know? An effect without a cause. Crazy things.”
    His right hand unfolded from his left. He reached across the table to her.
    The moment had come. Skin to skin. All the dangers of a touch.
    If she didn’t take his hand, he’d be stung by her rejection.
    The possibility of a relationship was at stake.
    Perhaps she had lied to herself. Perhaps she preferred to be alone. Her hesitation suggested as much.
    No. She hadn’t been conceived in passion—and in the surf—only for a life of loneliness.
    He would be either what he appeared to be or in some way a lesser man. She had nothing to lose. Except hope. Again.
    She took his hand, and knew him for the monster that he was.

4
Taking the Drop
    When a surfer came over the top of a wave, using its velocity to remain ahead of the curl, he was “taking the drop,” and ahead lay either a sweet ride or a wipeout, depending largely on his skill and on the steepness of the curved face of the wave, between its crest and trough. If the drop went wrong, rider and board could go into free fall down the face and either wipe out or recover just well enough to claim a tie with the ocean.
    In a sense, Makani was taking the drop when she accepted Rainer’s hand, and the wave down which she plummeted in free fall was storm-dark and menacing and strange. In the few dreadful seconds that followed the touch, surging out of the darkness at the man’s core and into her mind were faces of women and men, of children, mouths open in silent screams, eyes wide with terror, plus treasured and well-remembered patterns of blood in the gallery of his memory, because blood was art to him, blood his passion, blood his money, too, and in his mind the images of spilling blood were confused with thick gouts of hundred-dollar bills gushing from the wounds of his victims, murder for money, murder for pleasure, murder for murder’s sake. She saw herself, too, an object of intense desire, imagined in multiple poses, naked and vulnerable and chillingly submissive. During this deluge of shocking images, she sensed as well that he was in some way like her, that by touch he discovered his victims and learned why he would profit by the killing of them.
    The contact was far more intense than any she had previously experienced, as if she had grasped a cable through which surged a powerful current, so that she couldn’t easily let go. When she snatched her hand from his, the disconnection stung, produced a snapping-sizzling sound that arced