“Yes, we are!” William shouted back to his brother. “There are old climbers and there are bold climbers.”
“But there are no old, bold climbers!” Michael roared with laughter.
The climb turned out to be more challenging than it had looked. It required lots of different skills. They had to do vertical crack climbing, then suddenly they were face climbing, pressing tight against the rock, using very small handholds.
“We’re in the climbing groove now!” Michael screamed at the top of his lungs. He had forgotten about hunting for prey, forgotten his hunger. There was nothing but the climb now. Nothing but staying alive, survival of the fittest.
Suddenly, they had to commit—they were at a point in the climb where, once they made the next couple of moves, they couldn’t go back the way they had come. There was no
thing to do but go straight up. Or quit right now.
“What do you think, little brother? You make a plan for us. You decide. What does your instinct tell you?”
Michael laughed so hard he had to grip the rock face with both hands. He looked down—and what he saw was certain death if he fell. “Don’t even think about quitting. We won’t fall, brother. Not ever. We’re never going to die!”
They climbed to the top, and from there they could see New Orleans. It was their city now.
“We’re immortal! We’ll never die!” the brothers shouted into the wind.
Chapter 68
I STARED out at the great, sweeping live oaks. Then I noticed the plump magnolias and sloppy, fanning banana trees of the Garden District. There was nothing else for me to do. The surveillance continued. Jamilla was starting to repeat herself. We both were, and that became a running gag between us. Sections of the day’s Times-Picayune were all over the backseat of the car. We had read it cover to cover.
“There’s no physical evidence tying Daniel or Charles to a single murder. Not in any of the cities, Alex. Everything we have on them is circumstantial or theoretical, hypothetical bullshit. Does that make any sense to you? It doesn’t to me.” She was probably talking just to talk, but she was making sense. “It just doesn’t add up. They can’t be that good. No one is.”
We were parked four blocks north of the house on LaSalle. The domain. We could get there in seconds if anything developed, but so far nothing had. That was the problem. Daniel and Charles rarely left their two-hundred-year-old mansion, and when they did, it was only to go shopping or to a fancy restaurant downtown. Not surprisingly, they had good taste.
I tried to answer Jamilla’s question. “It makes some sense to me that we can’t link them to the early murders. You know as well as I do—once a murder case gets old, it’s almost impossible to find witnesses or compelling evidence. I don’t understand why we haven’t found anything on the recent murders, though.”
“That’s what I’m thinking too. We have witnesses in Las Vegas and in Charleston, but no one recognizes photos of Daniel or Charles. Why not? What are we missing?”
“Maybe they don’t commit the actual murders themselves,” I said. “Maybe they used to, but not anymore.”
“Don’t they want to feast on the kills? Drink the blood? What other purpose do the murders serve? Are they symbolic? Is this part of some arcane mythology? Are they creating a new mythology? Jesus, Alex, what the hell are these two monsters doing?”
I didn’t have answers to her questions or my own. No one did, unfortunately. So we sat in the car, tried to keep cool in the heat, and waited for Daniel and Charles to make their next move.
If they were so careful and so good, then why did we know about them, why were we here?
Chapter 69
WILLIAM FOUND this laughable. God, it was good! Priceless. He was watching the police as they in turn watched the house of horrors owned by Daniel and Charles. It was too much. The young prince walked down LaSalle, puffing on a cigarette, haughty, confident, unafraid of anyone, superior in every way he could imagine. Michael was sleeping, so he had decided to take a stroll.
This was rich. Maybe he would see one of the local celebrities who lived in the Garden District. Like the fabulous Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, or some asshole from MTV’s Real World house in the Big Easy.
There were two nondescript Lincolns parked on the street. He wondered if the magicians had noticed the cars. He smiled, shook his head. He wondered what the hell Daniel and Charles were thinking. They would be careful, of course. They had been committing murders for a long time, years and years. So now what? Something had to give.
He continued to the end of the block, then walked south. Most of the houses here had screened-in porches crawling with vines. Along the way, he saw a fine physical specimen—a male, twenty-one or so, shirt off, pecs gleaming with sweat. That picked up his spirits. He was hosing down a silver BMW convertible, the James Bond car.
His chiseled body, the spurting water hose, and the shiny car turned William on like a light switch. But he controlled himself and walked on.
And then, just down the street, he saw a young girl. She was maybe fourteen, sitting on her front porch, gently stroking a Persian cat. She was pretty, even sultry.
The girl had long brown hair that flowed down to her small breasts. A diaphanous snakeskin-print top over a belly-length tank top. Tight, dark blue jeans, hip hugging and flared just right. Stud and hoop earrings, both gold and silver. Toe rings. Bracelets of multiple colors on one slender arm. A typical teenager—except that she was so stunning. A complete turn-on. And arrogant, just like he was.
William stopped and called out to her. “Your cat is beautiful,” he said, and smiled wickedly.
She looked up, and he saw that she had the same piercing green eyes as the Persian. The girl ran her eyes all over him. He could actually feel her gaze against his skin. He knew that she wanted him. Men and women always did.