signs of blinkingpulsing-flashing incandescent bulbs, and by hundreds
upon hundreds of miles of glowing neon tubes folded upon themselves as
if they were the luminous intestines of transparent deep-water fish.
The blur of water on the pickup’s windows and the cowboy hat, its brim
turned down, were not sufficient to disguise his nightmarish face from
passing motorists. Therefore, he turned off the Strip well before he
reached the hotels, on the first eastbound street he encountered, just
past the back of McCarran International Airport. That street boasted no
hotels, no carnivalesque banks of lights, and the traffic was sparse. By
a circuitous route, he made his way to Tropicana Boulevard.
He had overheard Shadway telling Rachael about the Golden Sand Inn, and
he had no difficulty finding it on a relatively undeveloped and somewhat
dreary stretch of Tropicana. The single-story, U-shaped building
embraced a swimming pool, with the open end exposed to the street.
Sun-weathered wood trim in need of paint. Stained, cracked, pockmarked
stucco. A tar-and-crushed-rock roof of the type common in the desert,
bald and in need of rerocking. A few windows broken and boarded over.
Landscaping overrun by weeds. Dead leaves and paper litter drifted
against one wall. A large neon sign, broken and unlit, hung between
twenty-foot-tall steel posts near the entrance drive, swinging slightly
on its pivots as the wind wailed in from the west.
Nothing but empty scrubland lay for two hundred yards on either side of
the Golden Sand Inn. Across the boulevard was a new housing development
currently under construction, a score of homes in various stages of
framing, skeletal shapes in the night and rain. But for the few cars
passing on Tropicana, the motel was relatively isolated here on the
southeastern edge of the city.
And judging by the total lack of lights, Rachael had not yet arrived.
Where was she? He had driven very fast, but he did not believe he could
have passed her on the highway.
As he thought about her, his heart began to pound.
His vision acquired a crimson tint. The memory of blood made his saliva
flow. That familiar cold rage spread out in icy crystals through his
entire body, but he clenched his shark-fierce teeth and strove to remain
at least functionally rational.
He parked the pickup on the graveled shoulder of the road more than a
hundred yards past the Golden Sand, easing the front end into a shallow
drainage ditch to give the impression that it had slid off the road and
had been abandoned until morning. He switched off the headlights, then
the engine. The pounding of the rain was louder now that the competing
sound of the engine was gone. He waited until the eastbound and
westbound lanes of the boulevard were deserted, then threw open the
passenger-side door and got out into the storm.
He sloshed through the drainage ditch, which was full of racing brown
water, and made his way across the barren stretch of desert toward the
motel. He ran, for if a car came along Tropicana, he had nothing behind
which to hide except a few tumbleweeds still rooted in the sandy soil
and shaking in the wind.
Exposed to the elements, he again wanted to strip off his clothes and
succumb to a deep-seated desire to run free through the wind and night,
away from the lights of the city, into wild places. But the greater
need for vengeance kept him clothed and focused on his objective.
The motel’s small office occupied the northeast corner of the U-shaped
structure. Through the big plate-glass windows, he could see only a
portion of the unlighted room, the dim shapes of a sofa, one chair, an
empty postcard rack, an end table and lamp, and the check-in desk. The
manager’s apartment, where Shadway had told Rachael to take shelter, was
probably reached through the office. Eric tried the door, the knob
disappearing in his huge leathery hand, it was locked, as he had
expected.
Abruptly he saw a vague reflection of himself in the wet glass, a horned
demonic visage bristling with teeth and twisted by strange bony
excrescences. He looked quickly away, choking back the whimper that
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