The Devil's Bag Man Read Free

tub, letting the warm viscous liquid fill his ears.
    He was no priest, and he was no monster. He had taken no pleasure in the hundreds of deaths he’d arranged. But nor was he a sentimentalist. The butcher did not mourn the cow. He recognized that it gave up its life for a higher cause, and in his own way he honored that.
    Just as Domingo honored the girls he had procured on the Great One’s behalf.
    And the girls whose blood was the medium that might allow him to reach out now, across the cosmos.
    Domingo closed his eyes, and waited.
    You must clear your mind , Munoz’s notes had said.
    He did his damnedest.
    Nothing happened.
    He became acutely aware of an itch on his left ankle. He scratched it with his right foot, tried not to disturb the surface of the bath, the profound and unexpected heaviness of the blood against his chest and stomach. But his movement caused a slight ripple, and the taste was in his mouth now, hot and metallic. A slight burn to it, even, perhaps generated by Domingo’s imagination.
    He resettled. This ritual, like every other Munoz had revealed before his passing, was only to be undertaken by the Line of Priests. What exactly that meant, Domingo did not know. Except that the line was broken—that much was for sure. And the way he figured, that meant all bets were off, and anything was worth trying.
    He was no priest, but he was the only one left.
    That ought to count for something.
    He tried to focus on the Great One’s spirit and thus summon him.Imagined Cucuy’s voice slithering through the inside of his skull, as it once had. But the taste would not fade from Domingo’s mouth—if anything, it was growing stronger. And the weight, the warmth, the failure, the oppressive way the blood seemed to coat his skin—it was all too much.
    He sat bolt upright, his chest heaving.
    He had been wrong to play at priesthood.
    This wasn’t in his nature, and it wasn’t going to work.
    But something would.
    Domingo stepped out of the tub, exalted in the cool air as the blood slid down his thighs in thin rivulets.
    He had been going about this wrong. He was a man of the world. A fixer. A procurer. A deal maker. Nothing under the sun was beyond his reach, if he willed himself toward it.
    And all that he could reach, Domingo Valentine could reap.

CHAPTER 3
    S heriff Bob Nichols rambled his cruiser over the dirt service road, one hand on the wheel and the other between his legs. He couldn’t help playing with it, teasing himself. It was bad, he knew, but he was granting himself a lot of leeway these days, treating himself with kid gloves, and the flask wedged between his thighs served as a kind of security blanket.
    Knowing it was there calmed him down—presented a challenge he knew he could meet at a time when Nichols was sure of very little, trusted the world about as far as he could throw it. The flask was a sober man’s dumb-ass attempt to dramatize a state of utter, brain-melting confusion.
    The discipline not to get shithoused .
    You’re a real winner, huh, Nichols?
    On paper, everything should have been fine. Better than fine. For the first time since the ink had dried on his divorce, he was in a solid and loving relationship, something that might conceivably come equipped with a future. He’d met Ruth Cantwell less than three months back,when he’d been called out to investigate the kidnapping of a local girl named Sherry Richards. Ruth was the family’s therapist, had helped pry them free of a cult leader to whom the mother had been in thrall.
    One Aaron Seth, currently deceased.
    Courtesy Jess Galvan, father of the girl in question.
    Sherry’s mother was dead now too. Murdered that very same day by Marshall Buchanan, a massive, fire-scarred thug in Seth’s employ. It was Sherry who’d discovered the body—and Sherry who’d pushed a knife into the belly of the killer a few hours later.
    She was living with Nichols