from the slope in a wedge-shaped wing, and Rachael quickly took cover
behind it before he saw her.
She almost turned at once to creep back the way she had come, but his
peculiar posture and attitude had intrigued her. Suddenly it seemed
important to know what he was doing because, by secretly observing him,
she might learn something that would guarantee her escape or even
something that would give her an advantage over him in a confrontation
at some later time. She eased along the rock formation, peering into
several convexities and flute holes, until she found a windsculpted bore
about three inches in diameter, through which she could see Eric.
He was still kneeling on the wet ground, his broad humped back bowed to
the driving rain. He appeared to have… changed. He did not look
quite the same as when he had confronted her outside the public rest
rooms. He was still monstrously deformed, though in a vaguely different
way from before. A subtle difference but important. . .
What was it, exactly? Peering out of the flute hole in the stone, wind
whistling softly through the eight- or ten-inch-deep bore and blowing in
her face, Rachael strained her eyes to get a better view of him.
The rain and murky light hampered her, but she thought he seemed more
apelike. Hulking, slump-shouldered, slightly longer in the arms.
Perhaps he was also less reptilian than he had been, yet still with
those grotesque, bony, long, and wickedly taloned hands.
Surely any change she perceived must be imaginary, for the very
structure of his bones and flesh couldn’t have altered noticeably in
less than a quarter of an hour. Could it? Then again… why not? If
his genetic integrity had collapsed thoroughly since he had beaten Sarah
Kiel last night-when he’d still been human in appearance-if his face and
body and limbs had been altered so drastically in the twelve hours
between then and now, the pace of his metamorphosis was obviously so
frantic that, indeed, a difference might be noticeable in just a quarter
of an hour.
The realization was unnerving.
It was followed by a worse realization, Eric was holding a thick,
writhing snakene hand gripping it near the tail, the other hand behind
its head-and he was eating it alive. Rachael saw the snake’s jaws
unhinged and gaping, fangs like twin slivers of ivory in the flickering
storm light, as it struggled unsuccessfully to curl its head back and
bite the hand of the man-thing that held it. Eric was tearing at the
middle of the serpent with his inhumanly sharp teeth, ripping hunks of
meat loose and chewing enthusiastically. Because his jaws were heavier
and longer than the jaws of any man, their obscenely eager movement-the
crushing and grinding of the snakeould be seen even at this distance.
Shocked and nauseated, Rachael wanted to turn away from the spy-hole in
the rock. However, she did not vomit, and she did not turn away,
because her nausea and disgust were outweighed by her bafflement and her
need to understand Eric.
Considering how much he wanted to get his hands on her, why had he
abandoned the chase? Had he forgotten her? Had the snake bitten him
and had he, in his savage rage, traded bite for bite?
But he was not merely striking back at the snake, he was eating it,
eagerly consuming one solid mouthful after another. Once, when Eric
looked up at the fulminous heavens, Rachael saw his storm-lit
countenance twisted in a frightening expression of inhuman ecstasy.
He shuddered with apparent delight as, he tore at the serpent. His
hunger seemed as urgent and insatiable as it was unspeakable.
Rain slashed, wind moaned, thunder crashed, lightning flashed, and she
felt as if she were peering through a chink in the walls of hell,
watching a demon devour the souls of the damned. Her heart hammered
hard enough to compete with the sound of the rain drumming on the
ground. She knew she should run, but she was mesmerized by the pure
evil of the sight framed in the flute hole.
She saw a second snake-then a third, fourth, fifthoozing out of the
rain-peoled ground around Eric’s knees.