As he turned from the hallway toward the kitchen, he saw Tad standing on the beach, staring at the ocean.
Drayne shook his head. Tad rode the Hammer, crazy fucker that he was. It was gonna kill him someday, no question. He was in such crappy shape, it was a miracle it hadn’t killed him already, should have long since blown a blood vessel in the man’s brain, stroked him blind, crippled, and stupid, not necessarily in that order.
A night running with Thor was worth a week’s recovery for somebody in pretty good physical condition, maybe more. Tad ought not to be able to recover at all, and yet he had swung the Hammer more than anybody alive and somehow managed to keep breathing.
Of course. Tad had a portable pharmacy he gobbled, snorted, or shot up after he came off a Hammer trip. Probably more drugs than blood circulating in him at any given time. Somehow, he had managed to stay a step ahead of the reaper.
Pretty damned amazing.
Drayne opened the freezer, pulled the second bottle of champagne out. He lifted it to his lips, thought better about that, and grabbed one of the chilled glasses on the freezer rack. Drinking it from the bottle was for barbarians.
The bubbles didn’t get released.
Had to be civilised about this, didn’t we?
He poured the icy wine into the icy glass, watched the liquid turn to foam and fountain up, then slowly begin to settle down.
Time waiting for champagne bubbles to settle didn’t count.
But the trio jogged past, and if Tad even saw them, Drayne couldn’t tell it from here. Watching Tad when something like this happened was like watching a Roman emperor. Thumb up or thumb down, and nobody knew which it’d be.
He shook his head. Sooner or later, Tad was going to step wrong and draw the law’s attention. It had been a while since he’d done it last, and fortunately, it hadn’t led back to Drayne that time. Plus, the house was clean, that wasn’t a problem, he never kept anything illegal on hand for longer than it took to mix it and get it out again, but he didn’t need the local deputies knocking on his door and asking about the crazy asshole dressed in black who suddenly turned into the Incredible Hulk and laid waste to the beach. Low profile was the way to go. If they didn’t know about you, they wouldn’t be able to bother you.
He finished filling up the glass, topped it off, and put the bottle back into the freezer. He walked to the deck, sipping at the cold champagne.
Yeasty, with a hint of apple, good finish, no bitter aftertaste. Not the best, but after five or six glasses, there was no point in wasting the best; you couldn’t taste the really exotic flavors and subtle stuff anyhow. As long as it was good enough not to irritate your stomach, that was all you needed for the second bottle.
There was a guy they called the Wine Nazi, up just north of San Francisco, way out a winding road in Lucas Valley, who made the best champagne on earth. Grand Brut, dry as the Sahara, and he sold futures in it, you bought what you could afford, he would call you when it was damned well ready, and if you didn’t like it, too fucking bad. Worked out to about five hundred bucks a bottle–if you bought a case–and you couldn’t buy more than one case a year. Six thousand bucks a case, and that was the non vintage stuff. Sometimes it took eighteen months for the last batch to ripen to his satisfaction. The really good stuff ran two grand a bottle, and you had to get on a waiting list for that, too. Drayne’s name hadn’t gotten to the top of that list yet, but next year, he was pretty sure it would.
Drayne had done a tour there once. The winery was tiny, a hole-in-the-wall place, and before he was done, the Wine Nazi had him climbing up on barrels to taste the whites and reds right out of the casks, sucked it out with a long rubber tube and dribbled into a glass. And after a few sips of that, the guy had him helping hand-riddle the champagne bottles. They had to be turned so much every day, so the silt would settle and all.
Drayne was an appreciative audience. The guy was a certified genius when it came to wine, no question, and the champagne was the best of the lot. Of course, the Wine Nazi wouldn’t let him call it champagne, since technically that meant it had to come from that particular region of France, so he called it sparkling wine. Even though it made the average good vintage of the French stuff taste like stale ginger ale.
That was the stuff you saved for special occasions, definitely first-bottle, and not something you shared with Misty-Bunny-Buffy just to get laid. He had six bottles left, and six months left before he could buy another case. If he was lucky.
So he had to ration it, one bottle a month, no more, and even then, he might have to wait. Terrible situation.
He grinned. He sure had a lot to complain about, didn’t he? Living in a big house on the beach in Malibu, good-looking naked woman in his bed, a shitload of money, six bottles of the best champagne anybody in this town had.
Hell, it really didn’t get much better than that. did it?
Since it didn’t look like Tad was going to go ballistic and destroy the neighborhood, maybe he should go back to bed and nudge Honey awake.
He was sure he could think up something new for them to try.
Yep. That seemed like an excellent idea. He lifted his glass in a toast to his own cleverness.
Hi, ho, Bobby.
Away!
He headed back toward the bedroom.
Tad felt the power.
It coursed through him like an electric current, filling him with pulsing flashes of juice, set him humming like a dynamo at full spin.
He was a god out here, deciding the fate of all who passed. At his whim, he could strike them down, become Shiva the destroyer, changing the very configuration of the planet with a mere wave of his hand.
At his whim, which was how gods operated, far as he could tell.
He took a breath, and the sensation made orgasm seem pale in comparison. The thrills ran through his entire body, he could feel it everywhere at once, in his hands, his body, even his toes. Man. What a rush!
He was a god. Able to do anything he wished.
And what he wished to do right now was… walk.
To stride down the beach, to pass among his people, disguised as a reedy, tubercular man all dressed in black, but beyond comprehension to mere mortals.
As far. above them as a man was above an ant.
They couldn’t know. He felt sorry for them, being so weak, so stupid. So pitiful.
He started to walk, feeling the sand like a living thing under his boots, hearing the soft chee-chee-chee squeaks it made with each step. He was aware of the evening breeze touching his skin, the smell of salt and iodine from the sea, the taste of the very air. He was aware of everything” not just on this beach, but radiating out to galaxies a billion light-years from where he walked. It was all his territory, all of it.
If he reached up his arms, he could encompass it all in his grasp.
He laughed.
Ahead, somebody finished up a Frisbee game and headed for their towels. A beach volleyball game wound down. Traffic roared past on the highway, the cars and trucks taking on the aspect of dragons: fearsome creatures in their element, but creatures who knew better than to cross his path.
He was Tad the Bershaw, and any being with enough sense to see him would know he was to be feared.
He walked through his kingdom, feeling for the moment benevolent in his omnipotence. He would suffer them to live.
For now, anyway.
JaylandlQuantico, Virginia Jay Gridley had always been a man who enjoyed moving fast. When he slipped into his sensory gear and the net blossomed before him, infinite in its possibilities, he had always chosen speed as his vehicle. If he drove, it was a Viper, a rocket with wheels that smoked everything else on the road. Sometimes he flew–rocket packs, jets, copters, whatever. He created virtual scenarios that he zipped through like rifle rounds, clean, fast, slick as a tub full of grease.
Oh, now and then he would do period. He’d make a Western town and mosey into town on a horse.
Or a boat.
But getting there in a hurry was his pleasure, and most of his programs reflected that. Getting business done had always been about getting it done, not about the trip.