Read Wrath James White and Maurice Broaddus for Free Online Page A

trusting, his heart yearned toward her. She charged the very air around her, the air he breathed.

    “So that’s it?”

    “That’s it. I stare out the window and I want to see one more day. Keep looking out for your brother. He’d be lost without you.”

    The words fell like loose dirt on a coffin. She closed her eyes, still smiling a bit. Her breath became shallower, settling into sleep.

12

    Requiem, a hole in the wall night club, used to be a church. The refurbished sanctuary was now the main dance floor broken by rows of columns. Clusters of tables and chairs separated it from the lounge and bar area, the words “Entertainment one better than sterno enemas” painted on a nearby column. A dimly lit balcony ringed the main floor as huddles of shadows watched from above. Roadies scurried about the stage that had once supported a pulpit and choir loft, preparing for the band, Madonna’s Abortion, to play.

    An overweight girl with a feather boa draped around her shoulders and her hair pulled up sat in a corner of the club. A crescent moon caught in a shower of stars advertised tarot readings. Her business cards read “The Witch Cottage.” The prospect intrigued Samson; he’d never gotten a tarot reading before. He sat down across from her, attempting to hide the condescending smirk etched on his face.

    “How much?”

    “Fifteen dollars. You can ask me as many questions as you like. Here, shuffle these cards.” She handed him a stack of well-worn, oversized cards. Samson shuffled them awkwardly then handed the deck back to her. She dealt them in front of him.

    “How long will I be married?” he baited her. He wasn’t going to let this turn into one of those eerie moments. He suspected how this worked: the more he expressed on his face or in his voice, the more information she’d have for the con.

    “You will end up alone,” she said as if she didn’t hear his question. Studying the cards with a brooding intensity, Samson wanted to lean over to see what she was reading. “If you did the right thing, which you won’t, things might work out. You’re being punished by the Divine. What you’ve put out is coming back to you.”

    “Yeah? Well, fuck you too.” He threw a twenty dollar bill in the fortune teller’s face as he rose from the table.

    Techno strains from the band drew him back to the main floor; the music was little more than violent whining, like rending metal to a beat. Maroon light bathed the stage and the fog machine worked overtime. Between the multiple strobes and psychedelic haze of smoke, the dancing figures were little more than shadowy faces crying in the night. Sticking to the periphery, he walked to the bar, discrete from the dance area in its own pocket universe. Candles created flickering pools of amber light from the lounge. Incense burned in scattered piles. Samson ordered a drink, but everything tasted gray.

    No, tonight was about the hunt.

    He turned his attention to the gyrating flesh. Reading people, women especially, was what he did. One woman strayed from the pack of her friends as if afraid to catch a case of popularity. She chewed on the tip of her right thumb, her hair pulled back in a low maintenance ponytail. Leather straps encased her small breasts. Boots came up to the knees of her lanky legs, a matching mini skirt barely covering her behind. Her face was androgynous, not pretty, though fascinating all the same, conspicuous by her paucity of makeup.

    She lacked the smell of prey: too little of the neediness, the lack of self-esteem, the eagerness to please that Samson knew he could twist and pervert until she was happily signing her soul away for the self-validation of casual sex with one of the world’s most desirable men.

    That was when he spied his true intended. She struck a pose of too-cool-to-dance, catching herself if her head bobbed to the music. Her tall frame possessed an awkward grace, her swaying suggested sexiness in its own way. She wore a