My strength was returning, and the skinny man was shrinking. I saw fear in his eyes. I saw him for the coward he was and he knew it. He let me go and tried to back away, swiping at his face like a man attacked by a swarm of bees. But these weren’t insects. He was under attack by the fragmented spirits of those he’d murdered to create destructive black magic.

I stood and balled my fist. I was almost back to normal. I walked toward him and laid one right on the side of his face, leaning in with all my returning weight. I connected and the skinny man spun. Blood sprayed the wall. I kneed him in the groin. When he buckled I used the other knee to his face and stood him upright again.

One last ball of knuckles knocked him out.

I stood over the skinny man as the particles invaded his body, a last desperate attempt to have revenge on their killer.

By the time Brueger and her buddies stormed in yelling cop warnings, it was over. The dust had settled.

Later, after the skinny man was dragged away, he was identified as Karl Doll, a single accountant for one of the studios. In one of the rooms we found a box of news clippings. They were all about me. Evidently Karl fancied himself a junior monster hunter but he was jealous of me and thought if he could take my energy, he could do what I do.

Fuck that wimp. If you can’t do it with what you have, you can’t do it.

Thinking about what he did, killing people to get something from me made me glad I didn’t kill him like I wanted to. Let him go to trial and look at the faces of the families of those poor people he killed. Let him go to jail. With any luck he’d wind up in a cell with a belt thief, the way I had.

The whole horrible thing showed me just how vulnerable I had made myself, allowing magazines like the Speculator write about me.

Then it hit me.

I’d never called Sabrina. As far as she knew she’d bailed me out of jail and then blew her off. There would be no sweet-talking my way out of this one.

Fuck.

From one shit-storm to the next.

Soul Sucker

Tuesday, the fifth of September, began like any other day; I woke up, threw up, and went back to bed. It was five-thirty in the evening. Cases were few. I was, and had been, completely flat fucking broke the better part of a long and shitty L.A. summer.