that he could proceed with surefooted confidence. He did not know how
this sixth sense served him, and he did nothing to encourage it; he
simply had an uncanny awareness of his relationship with his
surroundings, knew his place at all times, much as the best high-wire
walkers, though blindfolded, could proceed with self-assurance along a
taut line above the upturned faces of a circus crowd.
This was another gift from his mother.
All of her children were gifted. But Candy’s talents exceeded those of
Violet, Verbina, and Frank.
The narrow passage opened into another canyon, and Candy turned east
again, along a rocky runoff channel, hurrying now as his need grew.
Though ever more widely separated, houses were still perched high above,
on the canyon rim; their bright windows were too far away to illuminate
the ground before him, but now and then he glanced up longingly because
within those homes was the blood he needed.
God had given Candy a taste for blood, made him a predator, and
therefore God was responsible for whatever Candy did; his mother had
explained all of that long ago. God wanted him to be selective in his
killing; but when Candy was unable to restrain himself, the ultimate
blame was God’s, for He had instilled the blood lust in Candy but had
not provided him with the strength to control it.
Like that of all predators, Candy’s mission was to kill the sick and the
weak from the herd. In his case, morally degenerate members of the
human herd were the intended prey: thieves, liars, cheats, adulterers.
Unfortunately he did not always recognize sinners when he met them.
Fulfilling his mission had been far easier when his mother had been
alive, for she had no trouble spotting the blighted souls for him.
Tonight he would try as best he could to confine his killing to wild
animals. Slaughtering people-especially close to home-was chancy; it
might bring him under the eye of the police. He could risk killing
locals only when they had crossed the family in some way and simply
could not be allowed to live.
If he was unable to satisfy his need with animals, he would go
somewhere, anywhere, and kill people. His mother, up there in Heaven,
would be angry with him and disappointed by his lack of control, but God
would not be able to blame him. After all, he was only what God had
made him.
With the lights of the last house well behind him, he stopped in a grove
of melaieucas. The day’s strong winds had blown out of the high hills,
down through the canyons, and out sea; currently the air seemed utterly
still. Drooping from the branches of the melaleucas, and every I
blade-sleek leaf was motionless.
His eyes had adapted to the darkness. The trees were silent in the dim
starlight, and their cascading trailers contributed to an illusion that
he was surrounded by a silent waterfall frozen in a paperweight
blizzard. He could even make out ragged scrolls of bark that curled
away from the trunks limbs in the perpetual peeling process that lent a
unique be to the species.
He could not see any prey.
He could hear no furtive movement of wildlife in the brush However, he
knew that many small creatures, filled warm blood, were huddled nearby
in burrows, in secreting drifts of old leaves, and in the sheltered
niches of rocks.
The very thought of them made him half mad with hunger.
He held his arms out in front of him, palms facing away from him,
fingers spread. Blue light, the shade of pale sapphire, as the glow of
a quarter-moon, perhaps a second in duration pulsed from his hands. The
leaves trembled, and the sparse bunchgrass stirred, then all was still
as darkness reclaimed canyon floor.
Again, blue light shone forth from his hands, as if they were hooded
lanterns from which the shutters had been brightly lifted. This time
the light was twice as bright as before, a deep blue, and it lasted
perhaps two seconds. The leaves rustled, a few of the drooping trailers
swayed, and the grass shivered for thirty or forty feet in front of him.