I tucked in my massive, leathery wings, focused my thoughts on the woman in the dancing flame, opened my eyes, and found myself standing naked on his stone balcony.
Naked but not without a plan.
My talons might be hideous and scary as hell, but they were good at carrying smaller objects. And one of them, this time, had been my daughter's extra backpack. The backpack was full of, let's just say, crime fighting gear.
Below me, I heard the muted sounds of men talking quietly among themselves. So far, I hadn't been seen. The sliding glass door in front of me was wide open. Apparently, Jerry Blum never expected a giant vampire bat to alight on his balcony. From within the room, I heard the sounds of muffled snoring.
I stepped into his darkened bedroom. My eyes did not need adjusting. His spacious room was electrified with shining filaments of zigzagging light. Ghost light. Vampire light. There was a lone figure sleeping in a massive four poster bed. White gossamer sheets hung from the bed's cross beams. Very uncrime lord-like.
The figure sleeping in the center of the bed was snoring softly, peacefully, contentedly. There was no evidence that this son-of-bitch stayed awake over the crimes against humanity he had committed.
There was a white cotton robe hanging over the wooden sleigh bed footboard. I slipped it on and assessed the situation. I was certain there were guards somewhere nearby, although none seemed directly outside the door. I didn't hear them, nor was my sixth sense jangling. My sixth sense was telling me that, for now, I was safe.
Carrying the backpack, I went over to the side of the bed and looked down at the man who had presumably killed Stuart's wife, a man who was powerful enough to bring down a government-owned airplane. There was a reason why I didn't confront him directly and openly. He would have gone after me and everything I loved, too. I had to hunt him from afar.
I had another reason for being here. Before I condemned the man to death, I had to know if I had the right man. Sure, Jerry Blum was a bastard. But was he the bastard I wanted?
Well, let's find out.
"Wake up, asshole," I said.
Jerry Blum's eyes popped open instantly. His hand snaked beneath his pillow, a practiced motion. He was fast, but I was faster. In a blink, his arm was pinned up over his head, driven into the mattress by my own hand, and I found myself leaning over him, staring down into his startled face. It was a face I had seen often: in the news, in books, and even in magazines. He was a celebrity crime lord, if ever there was one. Celebrity or not, he was a son-of-a-bitch. He was also quite handsome. Blum was in his late fifties, but he could have passed for his early forties. There was some gray at his temples, and there were fine lines that creased from the corners of his eyes and reached down to the corners of his mouth. These were not laugh lines. Worry lines, no doubt. Jerry Blum was not a big man, but I could feel his muscular body beneath me. Shockingly, amazingly, I found myself slightly turned on by the position I found myself in: pinning down a handsome devil in his bed in the middle of the night.
I shook off the feeling as soon as it registered.
He quit struggling, perhaps realizing it was doing him no good, and we stared at each other for a heartbeat or two. Ambient light made its way in through the open French doors. Laughter reached us from somewhere on his grounds, but not very close. A girl giggled. An airplane droned high overhead.
Jerry Blum had thin lips. Too thin for me. He breathed easily, his nostrils flaring slightly. He smelled of good cologne and something else. Lavender. But the scent wasn't coming from him. It was coming from his bed; in fact, it was coming from his pillow. I knew something about aromatherapy. One sprinkled lavender on one's pillow to ensure a good night's sleep. No doubt Mr. Blum had been plagued by a lifetime of nightmares. Or not.
"Who the fuck are you?" he finally said.
"Your worst nightmare," I said, and somehow managed to keep a straight face.
"Yeah, well, you look like a whore."
He next tried to throw me off. Tried being the operative word here. He grunted and grimaced and bucked, but I didn't go anywhere. Finally, he lay back, gasping, face contorted slightly in pain. I think he might have pulled something.
"You're a very bad man, Mr. Blum."
"And you're a dead woman."
"You're closer than you think," I said.
He opened his mouth to yell or scream and I used my other hand to slap his face hard. It was a nice slap, harder than I intended, but I didn't care. His eyes literally crossed, then settled back into place. A moment later, he was staring up at me in a daze.
"No yelling or screaming," I said.
Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. My stomach lurched. I purposely had not eaten tonight.
"Did Danny Boy send you up?"
"No."
"So you ain't no whore?"
"That's a double negative, Mr. Blum."
"What the fuck is going on?"
I found myself staring down at the fine trickle of blood that glistened at the corner of his mouth. Blood was food for me, sure, but it was also something else. The right blood - fresh blood - satisfied more than hunger.
I said, "Do you want the bad news, Jerry, or the really bad news?"
He fought me again, this time harder than before, doing his damnedest to buck me off him. But I didn't move, and he quickly tired of this game, gasping. And that's when I punched him. Hard. It was a straight jab into his left eye. I put a lot of strength behind the punch. I wanted it to hurt. The sound of bone hitting bone was sickening, and the punch drove his head deep into the pillow, where the goose down bloomed around him like a white flower, no doubt dousing him in peaceful lavender.
A very small voice protested what I was doing, as it had been doing all night long. It reminded me that I was a mother, a sister, a friend, an ex-federal agent, an ex-wife, a woman with a conscience and a heart. It reminded me that I was not a killer or a murderer.
And as Jerry Blum shook his head, as a deep cut along the edge of his orbital ridge dripped blood into the corner of his left eye, I listened to that voice. I listened to its arguments and I listened to its reasoning, and I decided, in the end, that Jerry Blum had to die.
But not yet. First, I needed information. First, I had to know.
I said, "You sabotaged an airplane carrying a half dozen government witnesses. The airplane crashed killing everyone on board."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
I punched him again, harder than before, driving his head deeper into the pillow.
"Fuck," he said. Blood was now staining his pillowcase, no doubt adding a nice coppery smell to the lavender.