“And these new blackouts?”

“Oh, shit, man … they’re totally different.”

— 4 —

Christopher Street, West Village, NY

September 30, 6:22 a.m.

Thirteen Days before the V-Event

It was the smell that woke Fayne up.

The stink.

“Christ,” he growled and whipped back the sheet, certain that he’d accidentally shit the bed.

It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been that drunk. Usually it was piss or vomit, but, yeah, he’d dropped his cargo once before. In college, the night he discovered that belly shots didn’t mix with shotgunned Millers, Jägermeister doubles, and six lines of coke.

Ah, youth, right?

Fayne growled at his own memories — as crystal clear as digital film and accompanied by a wise-ass voice-over that was equal parts shoulder angel and devil. Both of them were assholes who used his life as the punch-line of tired jokes.

Fuck ’em and fuck this, Fayne thought as he sat up, wincing at the horrible stink.

There was no excrement on the sheet.

There was nothing on the sheet but an opened but unused condom and a smear of lipstick.

Fayne’s eyes were filmed with sleep gunk and there was a taste in his mouth like a sick lizard took a whiz on his tongue.

The stink, though. Damn, that was everywhere. It was harsh.

It wasn’t the only smell, though.

He looked around.

“Balls,” he said. This wasn’t his apartment. The bed had black sheets and comforter. Fayne would have figured the Goth chick for that color scheme, and figured it had been a Christmas gift from the blonde’s friend. There was a pink scarf draped over the bedside lamp, but the lamp and the scarf were on the floor. So was the clock-radio, its plastic face cracked and screen dark.

There was no one else in the bedroom. Clearly a chick’s place. Framed photographs on the walls — a girl on a horse, smiling people in family groups, a German shepherd. Who the hell frames a picture of a German shepherd, he wondered.

The dresser was littered with bottles and atomizers and tubes of cosmetic gunk. Not his shit; not anything he recognized.

But, damn, what the hell was that smell?

How awkward a scene would it be if whatever chick he’d banged last night was taking an evil dump right now? And how weird was it that she wasn’t even giving him a courtesy flush. Smelled like something crawled up her ass and died.

Fayne swung his legs over the edge of the bed and pushed himself up.

Which is when things started to get really weird.

The motion of pushing himself off the bed shot him up and halfway across the floor. He crashed into the bureau and sent the perfumes and girl-junk flying everywhere. The impact sounded as loud as a car crash in the silence of the room.

Fayne froze — caught by the surprise of the sudden burst of energy and by the noise. He listened for sounds from the bathroom. A hasty flush. A timid enquiry.

But the place was quiet.

He slowly straightened.

His body felt strange. He vaguely remembered drinking a lot last night, so there should have been the trembling knees, the slosh of polluted sludge in his gut, and the throb of eyes that wanted to escape their sockets. None of that.

No pain at all, actually.

He felt bloated, though, like he’d eaten his way through the Hong Kong Buffet, and he wondered if he had. He always got hungry when he drank. It was one of the things his agent always got on him about. Five extra pounds didn’t seem like much, except when a casting agent expected to see rock hard abs and no trace of love handles.

He touched his stomach. He was so full that his belly ached.

And yet he did not feel sick. Not really. Just … full.

His balance was for shit, though, but that was the only other thing askew. After everything he must have done last night, it was like getting off easy.

The smell was worse. Not like it was getting worse, but standing made it easier to take in a good lungful.

“Jesus Christ on roller-skates,” he growled softly. The girl had to be in there with the shivering shits, locked into the fun and games of the epic hangover that he somehow avoided.

Better her than me, he thought.

He put the stuff back on the dresser, not bothering to arrange it. He had no idea what order it had been in. Before he turned away, he took a bottle of perfume and sprayed some on his fingers, then rubbed it on his upper lip. Best way in the world to kill the smell. It was a trick he learned when he was banging a Korean gal who worked at the Old Navy near the Starbucks. She was hotter than the surface of the sun but she reeked of garlic. Some cologne on the upper lip and voila — no sense of smell.

His clothes were on the floor, scattered between the closed door and the bed. He smiled. Although he could barely remember anything after that tenth shot of Jägermeister, he had a vague image of him and the blonde tearing at each other’s clothes. She was about twenty pounds overweight, but a lot of it was butt and boobs, so he was totally down with it. Her clothes were on the rug, too. Matching bra and thong, so it was clear she was out hunting when he’d met her at Starbucks. Sometimes you pick up a chick and she’s not only wearing granny-panties but she has one of those Batman utility-belt industrial bras. The kind they wore for function and which could probably stop a bullet better than Kevlar. When they were wearing that stuff, they usually excused themselves to the bathroom to do a quick-change before coming back in wearing something lacy and artfully losing all control.

Not this chick.

As Fayne bent to pick up his boxers he saw that her blouse was pretty badly torn. It made him smile. Real raw passion. You could never fake that in a film. When it happens like that, it’s fast and furious and it’s not pretty, but damn if it isn’t fun.

He dressed quickly. No chance for a shower, not with whatever was going on in the bathroom. As he slipped his shirt on he felt a dull ache on his back, and he turned his back to the mirror and peered over his shoulder.

Christ.

His back was crisscrossed in scratch marks. Some of them had bled and now the blood was dry and caked. Drunk or not, he must have really screwed this chick’s brains out last night.

Fayne grinned. “Groovy,” he said quietly and winked at his reflection, and the horny bastard winked right back.

He debated writing a note, but decided against it. He had no idea what the girl’s name was. He was moderately sure it began with a K. One of those trendy variations of Kathleen. Kaitlyn or Ketlen or Kettlecorn. Some shit like that.

Leave a note addressed to K?

He considered and decided what the hell. Can’t be a total dick.

Fayne crossed to the dresser, found a Starbucks receipt among the junk and a pen from a bank. He wrote what he usually wrote.

K:

You rock the universe!

We really burned the town down, didn’t we?

—M

Short and not too sweet. A player’s note, not a promise of lifelong devotion.

He placed the note on the pillow and was just turning to go when his foot struck something heavy that was half buried by the black satin sheets.

Fayne plucked the sheet back and took a quick look.

And screamed.

He staggered backward and fell hard on his ass, and then kicked his whole body backward until his back struck the wall a yard from the bathroom door.

The thing he’d kicked lay half under the bed.

Fayne shoved a fist into his mouth to keep from screaming again.

The whole world collapsed down around him, freezing into place, choking him, wrapping bands of terror around his chest.

He heard a thin whine, a mewling voice calling on God over and over again. The voice was a broken version of his own, the sounded squeezing through the stricture in his throat and the fist that was pressed between his teeth.

“Oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god…”

The contents of his stomach — all the food and booze he must have crammed down last night — suddenly felt like it wanted to come up and spew out. Except that he was too shocked even to vomit.

The moment stretched into impossibility. The thing under the bed refused to go away, refused to become part of some holdover of drunken fantasy.

It lay there, surrounded by the glistening black sheets.

It stared at him.

With big, blue eyes.

Fayne jerked his head around and stared at the closed bathroom door. His fist dropped away from his mouth.

“Oh Christ no,” he said hoarsely. “Please … no.”

It took forever for him to climb to his feet. Every muscle trembled with the urge to simple go. To flip the sheet over the impossible thing on the floor and get the fuck out of this place.

But instead, against all sense, he reached for the bathroom doorknob.

Not wanting to. God, how he did not want to open that door.

His fingers closed around the handle and it turned with a faint click.

He released it and let it swing inward.

The blonde chick was there.

The rest of her was.

Suddenly Fayne dropped to his knees as his stomach gave a sickening lurch and everything he ate last night came surging up. It shot from his mouth in a torrent that splashed everything in the bathroom.

Not Chinese food from the Hong Kong Buffet.

No solid food at all.

The vomit painted the entire bathroom in dark red.

— 5 —

NYPD Emergency Services

September 30, 7:16 a.m.

Thirteen Days before the V-Event

Transcript of a 9-1-1 call received by New York Police Department Emergency Services at 7:16 a.m. on Tuesday, September 12.

DISPATCHER: 9-1-1, state your emergency.

MALE CALLER: Oh my God, she’s dead. Oh, Jesus fuck she’s dead and —

DISPATCHER: Slow down, sir. Tell me what happened.

MALE CALLER: She’s all torn apart. Her head’s on the floor … and the bathroom — oh, fuck me —

DISPATCHER: Sir, I need you to try and calm down. I need you to tell me where you are.

MALE CALLER: I —I don’t know. Her place. Christ, I don’t even know where I am.

DISPATCHER: Sir, are you hurt?

MALE CALLER: No, I found her like this and —