BLACK MOUNTAIN LADY
Prologue
Vikor crouched low in the shadow of the spreading yew. His heart was beating from the short run, but he was
fully composed and calm, and his breathing was relaxed. Now he moved, crawling with indisputable grace, the
grace of a serpent perhaps, strong and threatening in spite of his body's being pressed to conform to the shape
of the earth as closely as the course of mouse gossip. His own course brought him to the corner of the planter
adjacent to the entryway.
There was one person in the house. Vikor had watched the place for a week, the comings and the goings. Of the
five residents, four were currently absent. He had watched them depart, four young black women in a new
Buick. Morna and Naomi were the only two names he knew of the four, and he also knew what the remaining
student called herself.
Gail. Gail was also black, and all of them were students at City College, although two or three of them were only
nominally students, having discovered that the pursuit of various combinations of drug dealing and prostitution
had a more immediate payoff than, for instance, study.

Naomi was the whore; Morna was the source of dope, primarily crystal methedrine. Gail… now Gail mixed the
two in a formula that was filling her bank account (make that her safe), in spite of the money she was spending
on clothing. Not only was she keeping her own dates, and packin' the boyfriend off with an expensive bag of
sticky bud after he'd had his horns clipped, but Morna was getting her merchandise through Gail, and Gail was
getting Naomi her dates for a cut of that action too.
Besides that, Gail was the actual tenant of the home the five-some shared, and she was making money off the
other four whether they knew it or not.
Vikor had ascertained some of this merely by waiting in the tree across the road, watching and listening. He was
far enough away, at least eighty feet, and there were other trees, so that no one would feel less than secluded on
the little cul-de-sac. The nearest homes were two hundred feet to the south, and invisible behind the forest of
plantings. To the north was the drop-off into Mission Valley.
These girls were rolling, and they weren't letting Uncle Sam in on much of it either. The house was loaded with
cash.
The alarm system at night was a serious challenge. Vikor met it merely by making his attack during the day,
when the system was in a mode which allowed coming and going. That day it was all a bustle with back and forth
and preparations until finally Morna, Naomi and the others roared away with Naomi at the wheel of the gold-
colored Buick.
Gail had seen them out with much laughing and roistering. Now she turned and walked back up the walk, past
the roses on the left and the yew on the right, went inside and shut and locked the massive, solid, security door.

As the deadbolt clicked, Vikor left the tree and raced silently across the peaceful road, crossing the eighty feet
in a quick four seconds and swooping without a sound into the cover of the yew.
Seconds later, five seconds later, to be exact, as he had observed innumerable times in the week of patient
spying, there was a click, the door swung inward, and Gail was outlined in the opening. She held the doorknob in
her left hand and a cat, curled imprisoned against her chest. She stooped to release the feline who invariably
slipped in during the humans' use of the door and had to be as invariably ushered to exit.

"Out you go, Puttin'," she had time to say before her head shot up and her mouth dropped, and a scream had
just arrived in her throat when Vikor intercepted it. She was dead in a flash, her heart pierced by a dagger, her
mouth cupped by a leather palm, her body pushed backward into the house, her cat dropped and gone with a
yowl.
The leather hand slid up Gail's face and seized her hair. Vikor rolled her over onto her chest, bracing her body
with a knee in the back while yanking her head back to reveal her smooth, dark throat. One of the whispery
sharp edges of the dagger sliced across her throat, severing arteries, veins and trachea in a single deft slash.
"Out you go, Puttin'," murmured Vikor.
And out she went. The liquid core of Gail Henderson came out in a red gush onto the floor of her entryway.
Vikor kicked shut the door with his foot, as the last of Gail Henderson's invisible mist of breath came out and
spread lost and confused into the atmosphere of the invaded home.
He did not have a drop of blood on him, and with fastidiousness that he himself found amusing he washed his
dagger at the kitchen sink.
Vikor had quickly ascertained that there was at least no one else in immediate sight within the entryway, the
living room, the stairs, the landing above, or in the kitchen as he glided silently toward the sink. Dagger clean,
he now made a swift but complete search of the house. Anyone in there would still be unaware of the murder,
the danger, or Vikor, stalking room by room.
In moments he was back by the side of the absolutely, no mistake about it, dead, young, black woman. He shook
his head in a brief empathy with her tragedy. Tsk. If "tsk" was ever sincere, it was as Vikor spoke the trite
regret in his mind. Tsk. So young, and pretty.
And rich, he hoped, reaching for the key that hung like a like a charm on a bracelet about her wrist.