Shadowfires. By: Dean R. Koontz

seemed alive amidst the animated shadows.

Whitney’s screaming was coming from outside, so she figured that Eric

was out there, too, rather than in the garage. She abandoned caution

and hurried past the black Mercedes, stepping over a couple of paint

cans and around a pile of coiled garden hoses.

A piercing, blood-freezing shriek cut through Whitney’s screams, and

Rachael knew without doubt that it was Eric, for that shrill cry was

similar to the one he’d made while pursuing her across the desert

earlier in the day.

But it was more fierce and furious than she remembered, more powerful,

and even less human and more alien than it had been before. Hearing

that monstrous voice, she almost turned and ran. Almost. But, after

all, she was not capable of abandoning Whitney Gavis.

She plunged through the open door, into the night and tempest, the

pistol held out in front of her. The Eric-thing was only a few yards

away, its back to her. She cried out in shock because she saw that it

was holding Whitney’s leg, which it seemed to have torn from him.

An instant later, she realized that it was the artificial leg, but by

then she had drawn the beast’s attention.

It threw the fake limb aside and turned toward her, its impossible eyes

gleaming.

Its appearance was so numbingly horrific that she, unlike Whitney, was

unable to scream, she tried, but her voice failed her. The darkness and

rain mercifully concealed many details of the mutant form, but she had

an impression of a massive and misshapen head, jaws that resembled a

cross between those of a wolf and a crocodile, and an abundance of

deadly teeth. Shirtless and shoeless, clad only in jeans, it was a few

inches taller than Eric had been, and its spine curved up into hunched

and deformed shoulders. There was an immense expanse of breastbone that

looked as if it might be covered with horns or spines of some sort, and

with rounded knobby excrescences. Long and strangely jointed arms hung

almost to its knees. The hands were surely just like the hands of

demons who, in the fiery depths of hell, cracked open human souls and

ate the meat of them.

“Rachael . . . Rachael . . . come for you . . . Rachael,” the

Eric-thing said in a vile and whispery voice, slowly forming each word

with care, as if the knowledge and use of language were nearly

forgotten. The creature’s throat and mouth and tongue and lips were no

longer designed for the production of human speech, the formation of It

shuddered and spat something into the mud, then lurched up from the

ground, all the way to its feet.

“Run!” Whitney shouted. “For Christ’s sake, Rachael, run!”

She had no hope of saving Whitney. There was no point in staying to be

killed with him.

“Rachael,” the creature said, and in its gravelly mucus-thick voice were

anger and hunger and hatred and dark need.

No more bullets in the gun. There were boxes of ammunition in the

Mercedes, but she could never reach them in time to reload. She dropped

the pistol.

“Run!” Whit Gavis shouted again.

Heart hammering, Rachael sprinted back into the garage, leaping over the

paint cans and garden hoses.

A twinge of pain shot through the ankle she had twisted earlier in the

day, and the claw punctures in her thigh began to burn as if they were

fresh wounds.

The demon shrieked behind her.

As she went, Rachael toppled a set of freestanding metal shelves laden

with tools and boxes of nails, hoping to delay the thing if it pursued

her immediately instead of finishing Whitney Gavis first. The shelves

went over with a resounding crash, and by the time she reached the open

kitchen door, she heard the beast clambering through the debris. It

had, indeed, left Whitney alive, for it was in a frenzy to put its hands

upon her.

She bounded across the threshold, slammed the kitchen door, but before

she could engage the dead-bolt latch, the door was thrown open with

tremendous force. She was propelled across the kitchen, nearly fell,

somehow stayed on her feet, but struck her hip against the edge of a

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