Shadowfires. By: Dean R. Koontz

signs of blinkingpulsing-flashing incandescent bulbs, and by hundreds

upon hundreds of miles of glowing neon tubes folded upon themselves as

if they were the luminous intestines of transparent deep-water fish.

The blur of water on the pickup’s windows and the cowboy hat, its brim

turned down, were not sufficient to disguise his nightmarish face from

passing motorists. Therefore, he turned off the Strip well before he

reached the hotels, on the first eastbound street he encountered, just

past the back of McCarran International Airport. That street boasted no

hotels, no carnivalesque banks of lights, and the traffic was sparse. By

a circuitous route, he made his way to Tropicana Boulevard.

He had overheard Shadway telling Rachael about the Golden Sand Inn, and

he had no difficulty finding it on a relatively undeveloped and somewhat

dreary stretch of Tropicana. The single-story, U-shaped building

embraced a swimming pool, with the open end exposed to the street.

Sun-weathered wood trim in need of paint. Stained, cracked, pockmarked

stucco. A tar-and-crushed-rock roof of the type common in the desert,

bald and in need of rerocking. A few windows broken and boarded over.

Landscaping overrun by weeds. Dead leaves and paper litter drifted

against one wall. A large neon sign, broken and unlit, hung between

twenty-foot-tall steel posts near the entrance drive, swinging slightly

on its pivots as the wind wailed in from the west.

Nothing but empty scrubland lay for two hundred yards on either side of

the Golden Sand Inn. Across the boulevard was a new housing development

currently under construction, a score of homes in various stages of

framing, skeletal shapes in the night and rain. But for the few cars

passing on Tropicana, the motel was relatively isolated here on the

southeastern edge of the city.

And judging by the total lack of lights, Rachael had not yet arrived.

Where was she? He had driven very fast, but he did not believe he could

have passed her on the highway.

As he thought about her, his heart began to pound.

His vision acquired a crimson tint. The memory of blood made his saliva

flow. That familiar cold rage spread out in icy crystals through his

entire body, but he clenched his shark-fierce teeth and strove to remain

at least functionally rational.

He parked the pickup on the graveled shoulder of the road more than a

hundred yards past the Golden Sand, easing the front end into a shallow

drainage ditch to give the impression that it had slid off the road and

had been abandoned until morning. He switched off the headlights, then

the engine. The pounding of the rain was louder now that the competing

sound of the engine was gone. He waited until the eastbound and

westbound lanes of the boulevard were deserted, then threw open the

passenger-side door and got out into the storm.

He sloshed through the drainage ditch, which was full of racing brown

water, and made his way across the barren stretch of desert toward the

motel. He ran, for if a car came along Tropicana, he had nothing behind

which to hide except a few tumbleweeds still rooted in the sandy soil

and shaking in the wind.

Exposed to the elements, he again wanted to strip off his clothes and

succumb to a deep-seated desire to run free through the wind and night,

away from the lights of the city, into wild places. But the greater

need for vengeance kept him clothed and focused on his objective.

The motel’s small office occupied the northeast corner of the U-shaped

structure. Through the big plate-glass windows, he could see only a

portion of the unlighted room, the dim shapes of a sofa, one chair, an

empty postcard rack, an end table and lamp, and the check-in desk. The

manager’s apartment, where Shadway had told Rachael to take shelter, was

probably reached through the office. Eric tried the door, the knob

disappearing in his huge leathery hand, it was locked, as he had

expected.

Abruptly he saw a vague reflection of himself in the wet glass, a horned

demonic visage bristling with teeth and twisted by strange bony

excrescences. He looked quickly away, choking back the whimper that

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