One In A Million (The Millionth Trilogy Book 1) Read online

“What’s happening?”

  “Never mind that now. Just focus. Victoria. The drawing. The words. She noticed.”

  “Yes. F—” Kyle caught himself and looked at The Gray Man. Despite the wind, not a hair on his head moved, nor did his clothing.

  “Once you captured her attention it wasn’t long before you captured her, and what a wounded bird she was, right, Kyle? Lost her virginity in seventh grade and watched that boy brag about it the next day to the whole school. You remember because that was the first day you ever noticed her. She’d been at her locker, crying just a little bit.”

  “That guy was a pot-smoking asshole.”

  “Yes. But he was the cool kid, and you were a nerd: new to the school by three weeks, hair in your face, still reading books at recess, at fourteen years old. After that guy came a few more surfer-types, and more assaults on her heart until, finally, she decided to give the nerdy guy a shot for once.”

  Thoughts of Victoria flooded Kyle’s mind. He remembered her face when they first kissed, her slender fingers entwined in his, and how he stopped feeling like a boy the minute he held her close, smelled her hair and listened as she shared her dreams.

  “She was beautiful,” Kyle whispered.

  “Yes, she was.”

  “We were just kids, man.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “It just didn’t work out.”

  “You dumped her over a cheap dinner, Kyle, at the Pizza Hut that stood right here. It was three days before you went off to college.”

  “I thought it would be best for both of us.”

  “No. You wanted to get laid as much as possible on your way to your bachelor’s degree, Kyle.”

  The lighted signs of the stores around them lost their contrast, their colors bleeding together in a blur of letters and symbols, warping somehow into false facades.

  The boy on the bike was off the curb now and fixed in their direction.

  The Gray Man continued, “To make matters worse, you just disregarded her pain. You shut her off. Ignored her messages. Didn’t call her back. You got the beauty and then realized all your own ugliness, and so you fled, leaving her behind.”

  “You grow up. You move on,” Kyle said, his voice flat.

  “Not always.”

  “What’s this kid—” Kyle held up his hand, trying to call The Gray Man’s attention to the boy on the bike.

  “Focus, Kyle. Never mind him. We’re almost there.”

  “Okay. Fine. I messed up. That’s part of being a teenager. You screw up.”

  “No, no, no… No hiding behind the masses, Kyle.”

  “I don’t know what you—”

  “What did you do!”

  “I hurt her.”

  “Yes. You changed her life, forever. She never quite recovered. It would never be about love again, with any relationship she had going forwards. She was done with it. You made her believe, once and for all, that love was a lie. Even after her marriage and having kids.”

  “Kids?”

  The boy was bearing down on the pedals, the swift hum of the spokes on his wheels growing louder as he grew nearer.

  “Oh, yes, Kyle, life goes on. Indeed. She’s still alive. She has a family, and for what it’s worth, she’s still quite beautiful.”

  “What’re you saying? That this is all about Victoria?”

  “It’s about a lot of things, Kyle,” The Gray Man answered, and then grimly motioned over his shoulder with his thumb at the boy on the bike. “But first, it’s about him.”

  Then The Gray Man disappeared.

  The boy on the bike was only ten yards away, on a crash course with Kyle.

  “Hey!” Kyle yelled.

  Even now, close up, beneath the streetlights, Kyle couldn’t see the boy’s face beneath the hoodie. It was only when the boy stomped hard on the brakes of the bike and launched himself over the handlebars like a hooded missile that Kyle realized he wasn’t human. Nothing human could move into flight that quickly from such an abrupt stop.

  Stumbling backwards, Kyle tried to get away, but it was too late. The… thing… tackled him, clutching at his throat as the momentum toppled them both to the sidewalk. Kyle was barely able to turn his body enough to partially roll with the impact, the side of his head scraping across the sidewalk instead of bouncing, helping him to avoid a concussion in the process.

  Bestial in ferocity and strength, the boy-thing began to overwhelm him. Kyle pushed at it, trying to put space between them and gain some leverage on the ground, like his father had taught him: when in a fight and facing any opponent stronger or larger than you, take the fight to the ground. Everything was more equal on the ground.

  But this was just a boy, maybe in his teens, and yet he was still too strong for him, and a leathery hand was now punching at Kyle’s face.

  As they fought, his assailant’s hoodie fell backwards, revealing a face of twisted raw meat, gouged cheeks and teeth like slivers of bones. His eyes were the worst: glistening red orbs that filled his sockets. Then, to Kyle’s horror, it spoke in a gargled sound, as if its throat was filled with liquid. “You can’t have her, maggot. You won’t.”

  It had breath like the smell of the dead. Sweet. Sickly. Rotting flesh.

  Kyle’s adrenaline tripled, and he shoved at the creature with all his might, catching it off balance. It fell backwards and rolled over. Kyle heard scraping and realized that it was the creature’s claws gouging for traction on the sidewalk in order to regain balance and launch another attack. Kyle stood and looked around for a weapon, a piece of wood or metal. But there was nothing.

  This can’t be happening. But it was. He believed it now. He had no choice but to.

  The creature advanced on him and unleashed a series of punches and kicks, first to Kyle’s face and chest, then to his stomach. It was no use. Kyle’s mind shifted from fight to flight. He spun and grabbed at a nearby stop sign, using it to pull away from the creature, and took off at a full bolt, his right shoe slipping on a McDonald’s wrapper briefly before gaining traction again.

  He made it maybe ten feet before the thing jumped on his back and wrapped its legs around his waist and its forearms over his face and mouth. Kyle spun, first in one direction, then the next, trying to shake it loose. It was no use. He couldn’t breathe. He could barely see.

  His legs growing weak, Kyle was about to try one last time to flip the creature off of him when he saw The Gray Man reappear directly in front of them and reach up, his hands now glowing in white flame as he grabbed the creature by the head and pulled it off Kyle as though it were a child’s toy.

  The creature screamed and tried to push away, but The Gray Man held it firm, the white flame enveloping it from the head down and smothering its screams as its feet kicked in all directions, the predator now the prey.

  The Gray Man looked at Kyle. “Do you realize now what you’re up against?”

  Still gasping for air, Kyle struggled to reply, managing only one word: “Yes.”

  The Gray Man forced the creature to the ground as he continued to speak. “Understand two things: you can see them, and they can see you. But you need to avoid them at all costs.”

  “No arguments,” Kyle managed, his face frozen in shock.

  The Gray Man’s gaze fell on Kyle. “Do you know now what you need to do next?”

  Kyle hesitated. “I need to find Victoria?”

  “Yes.”

  “Seriously? You want me to go find Victoria? Why?”

  “Because she’s about to make the same mistake you have.”

  Stunned, Kyle looked warily at the creature scrambling madly in The Gray Man’s grip and could only manage a weak nod.

  The Gray Man nodded back. “I’ll get you started, but the rest is up to you. See you soon.”

  Then he and the creature disappeared.

  Kyle stood, stunned for a moment, before the energy that had originally transported him returned, now as a white orb that began at his feet and then expanded until it was
like a cocoon of light, enveloping him and then transporting him, to where he didn’t know. Panic and confusion pushed in on him as the world dissolved into blurring colors, like a melted box of crayons.

  He realized that he would have to call Tamara. To tell her what he’d done. That would be bad enough. But to then tell her that he was off now to find his first love?

  There was no way in heaven or hell that this was going to turn out well. He knew that much for sure.

  CHAPTER 6

  With Juanita gone and the kids asleep, Tamara tried calling Kyle twice, but each time his phone went straight to voicemail. Evidently this would have to be dealt with tomorrow, but her frustrations were rising and sleep was not going to be an easy commodity to come by. Something was wrong. She could feel it.

  But she was just being silly. “Best to just go to bed and end this day,” she whispered.

  After turning out the lights in the kitchen, she went and checked on both kids one more time. Seeing that they were sleeping peacefully, she turned out the hall light, in the process noticing more family pictures, neatly arranged on the wall, with a lingering sense of sadness.

  While undressing in her bedroom, she took note of her body. The Zumba classes were working. Her arms and shoulders were becoming leaner. She had never been heavy, but the baby weight had been the hardest to purge. It had taken carrot juice in place of two meals a day, the Zumba classes and a three-month boot camp to get her to this point. Her abs weren’t ripped, not like when she’d been on the volleyball team back in college, but they were firm now.

  Age was most evident in her eyes and in the crow’s feet that had been planted there, one line at a time, over the years. But her body was still good.

  Based on the meeting tonight, she still had “it,” and that made her feel good. She’d had an old buck and young buck circling her, and she was embarrassed to admit it, but it felt good. But why be embarrassed? She hadn’t been with anyone but Kyle for over seventeen years now.

  Besides, what was wrong with thinking about… Ben.

  He was a baby, but she could teach him things.

  Shaking her head she turned away from the mirror, as if it were the cause of these odd inner reflections, showing her not just the lines around her eyes but the lines that were forming inside her now too, delineating her.

  While walking to the bathroom, she noticed the quiet of the house. After putting her hair up, she removed her makeup and washed her face before finishing the ritual by rubbing Oil of Olay into her cheeks and around her eyes. She felt like crying again but instead brushed her teeth, noticing that a glob of toothpaste had fallen into the sink. She didn’t care in the least.

  Her thoughts were calmed, as if the bathroom were some sort of cave immune to the wavelengths that she’d been fighting off a moment ago. But as soon as she stepped back onto the soft carpet in the bedroom, her thoughts turned once again to Ben.

  He was not her subordinate so much as a junior coworker. Still, she had learned back in college, when she had waitressed at Red Lobster and made out with the prep-cook, that work was a place to best avoid messing around.

  But Ben’s broad shoulders reminded her of one of the swim team boys she’d dated, the only other man she’d slept with besides Kyle, and the way he kissed her and almost enveloped her when they made love, making her vision blur every time they finished.

  She laid in bed in the dark and tried to fight the memories off, but they were like ghosts reclined in the sheets next to her, a whispering audience demanding more and more attention.

  And maybe a little self-satisfaction.

  No. She shouldn’t do this. It wasn’t right.

  She and Kyle had just had a fight, that was all.

  But Ben was young, and he wasn’t tired of her like Kyle. He still thought she was beautiful, and he still listened when she talked. He was almost like a sweet puppy the way he panted after her. But unleashed, given his moment to conquer her, he would take charge, she could sense it.

  She closed her eyes and was just about to surrender to the fantasy when for some reason she thought of Kyle dead somewhere, broken and bleeding in some idiot friend’s car, one or the other of them having decided to take the wheel that night.

  The force of this jarring vision ruined the mood completely.

  What if he was dead?

  What would she tell the children? Worse, what would she do? Despite everything, the notion that she would never see Kyle again made her sick to her stomach.

  She rolled over and buried her face in her pillow. She was just full of terrifyingly crazy and emotional thoughts tonight, wasn’t she? Maybe it was just PMS.

  Or maybe this was just the worst birthday ever.

  NAPOLEON SAT in the passenger seat of the car, the interior lights reflecting off the windshield in contrast to the night sky beyond, while Parker drove to Kyle Fasano’s residence in La Canada. It seemed like a logical place to start because, as far as they knew, Fasano was the one who was still alive. Why he’d left his car behind at the hotel was a mystery that could be figured out later.

  Since it was about a half-hour drive and he still felt like crap, Napoleon tried to get in a quick nap, but he couldn’t. Despite the ache in his head and the weariness that hung on his bones, there simply was no getting around it: he was fighting la desesperación again, too.

  The black asphalt of the 5 Freeway stretched out like an endless eel, the headlights from the car casting a dull glow ahead of them. Like a hypnotist’s watch, the yellow lane lines ripping alongside the front of the car in rapid succession lulled Napoleon into recollections he would have preferred to avoid.

  She said she was leaving because he was a hard man, with or without the booze, drunk or sober. She had been raised in a good Venezuelan home by parents of modest means who were never able to escape the barrio she’d been brought up in, a place not as bad as Napoleon’s East LA neighborhood, but not much better either. Countries could be different in all sorts of ways, save poverty; it was a human condition that transcended politics or culture.

  Over the years Napoleon had observed that hunger was hunger, be it for lack of food or lack of love, and it could always reduce things back down to the base roles of the human species: men used violence to get what they wanted and women used their bodies. Each gender had a weapon and used it at will. To the men, life became cheap; no less so than the notion of love to the women.

  Despite the odds, he and Esperanza had first met by bumping into one another at Union Station in Los Angeles, Napoleon on his way back from a fishing trip in San Diego, Esperanza on her way to Montebello to live with her aunt after finally getting her green card. He was twenty years younger and thirty pounds lighter then, freshly tanned and returning to work as a beat cop on the streets where he’d grown up.

  She was strikingly beautiful and blatantly sexual in her self-confidence. Napoleon had seen this type of chica before, many times. Even then, in her mid-twenties, without what was between her legs she was little more than a jaded child. There was one very important difference to Esperanza though: she had figured this out for herself already and was resentful about it. She was determined to become something more than a new position in someone’s bed.

  Since they were joking and flirting with each other as they exited the building, Napoleon figured he had nothing to lose and asked her if she wanted to get some dinner nearby, on Olvera Street. She asked what, exactly, was Olvera Street, and he laughed and told her that her Spanish sounded funny. She said his did too. Her aunt wasn’t expecting her for a while, so she agreed. She was not only hot, but she had the guts to go out with a stranger in a strange city too.

  It was later that night, back at his place, as he reached up her skirt and felt the switchblade strapped against her thigh, when he realized why she’d been so bold. She could take care of herself. They screwed the night away, and afterwards she cried, telling him that she felt cheap. He told her that he loved her, words he’d never used before and couldn’t believe he was
saying, especially to someone he’d just met, and she laughed in his face, her spit and tears mixing on his forehead like a baptism of shame.

  It took him weeks and then months to win her over, driving out to Montebello to see her and prove to her that finally, in her life and his, they could both believe that love was more than a fake commodity with a bad exchange rate.

  She left him, three years later, two years after they were married, for another man who’d gotten her pregnant. Napoleon would never forget that day; in fact, he still relived it a few times a week. He’d asked her why, and she simply replied: desesperación. Desperation.

  She was desperate for the love they had first shared, which wore off after Napoleon was promoted to detective and buried himself in those first cases so crucial to a young career. Napoleon didn’t believe her, and he told her so. What she was really desperate for was the child that Napoleon wasn’t able to give her. After standing by her the whole time they thought she was the problem, she bailed six months after the doctor’s test showed he was the one who was sterile.

  He sighed heavily in the car, hoping that Parker didn’t hear. These were never good thoughts. He wanted a drink, but he was eight years sober and not about to go there. Briefly opening his eyes, he noticed the traffic on the freeway was light, even for this hour, before his mind slipped back in time again.

  That’s what had really unraveled things in the end. His hard life and hard job mixed with hard liquor and, well, what kind of man can’t make babies? He hated himself, and he hated her for reminding him every day of what he couldn’t do. His mother had been killed in a car accident when he was nine, his father had fled to Mexico never to be seen again, and his grandparents had been forced to raise him on two nickels and their feeble-ass prayers, which everyone in their neighborhood knew were answered one out of every ten times. And after all of that, what had God blessed him with? A broken dick. Thanks. Amen.

  He coughed a bit but was able to keep it under control this time. He thought of Caitlyn Hall, dead now, before life could kill her like it was killing everyone else, like it was killing him: slowly.