Ash Return of the Beast

CHAPTER 50



The Same Evening…

Kane dragged himself into his apartment, turned on the lights and draped his damp blazer over the back of a chair. He moved to the bathroom, grabbed a towel off the rack and dried his hair.

When he’d left for work that morning there was no reason to even consider the need for a hat or an umbrella. The late evening summer shower now falling on the city was in some ways a welcome change from the unusually long hot spell that had relentlessly seared the Pacific Northwest for nearly two straight weeks. The rain was rinsing the dusty windows and giving the city streets a good washing. The nearly parched summer flowers were drinking it up like thirsty desert dwellers. Their sighs of relief were nearly audible. The only thing the rain didn’t seem to be doing was washing away Kane’s dilemma.

He tossed the towel into the hamper and moved to the kitchen for a bite to eat but nothing sounded good. He could order Chinese but even that didn’t sound very appetizing. The last beer in the refrigerator seemed to have the most appeal. He popped the cap and sat down at the kitchen table and took a sip as he watched the little trails of raindrops drizzling down the kitchen window. He leaned back in the chair and let out a long sigh, glad to be away from the job, at least for the night.

The horrendous secret he was keeping made every minute at the office increasingly difficult to endure. While everyone else was working hard to come up with something solid that they could use to hang Cowl––or anyone else, for that matter––he alone already knew the truth. There was no question about it. Cowl was their man. But sharing that knowledge with anyone else would mean exposing himself to the embarrassment of the shameful things he’d done as a child. He slammed the bottle down on the table and scolded himself. No, goddamn it. I didn’t do anything wrong. That bastard did it to me. He pushed the chair back and stood up. He walked over to the sink and stared out the window. Suddenly, he realized something. Something that he found both disturbing and yet strangely enlightening at the same time. He and Rye Cowl had something in common––something so deeply embedded in their own individual psyches that he now saw it as a bond between them. The motivation that was apparently fueling Cowl’s bizarre path of revenge, and the thing that was creating Kane’s own personal dilemma, were one and the same. Stranger yet, it was driving each of them toward the same end: the death of Pastor Pete.

Or not.

Kane winced as he felt the dilemma squirming inside his gut, trying to chew its way out. He felt sick and leaned over the sink. His stomach churned and he gagged––once––twice––but nothing came up.

He straightened up, wiped the drool from his chin and stared at his reflection in the window. For a brief moment he saw Cowl staring back at him. Shaken by the vision, he pushed away from the sink and looked again only to see his own startled reflection. He laughed. He didn’t know why. It wasn’t funny. F*cking son of a bitch. And where the hell is Ravenwood?