Shadowfires. By: Dean R. Koontz

quick to step through a doorway.

Let’s be slow and careful.”

“Believe it or not, I can handle just about any teenage girl who wants

to throw a punch at me.”

“It’s not the mistress I’m worried about,” she said sharply.

“Then who?”

Tight-lipped, holding her pistol at the ready, she led the way through

the house, turning on lights as they went.

The uncluttered ultramodern decor-more futuristic than in any of Eric’s

other habitats-bordered on starkness and sterility. A highly polished

terrazzo floor that looked as cold as ice, no carpet anywhere. Levolor

metal blinds instead of drapes. Hard-looking chairs. Sofas that, if

moved to the depths of a forest, might have passed for giant fungi.

Everything was in pale gray, white, black, and taupe, with no color

except for scattered accent pieces all in shades of orange.

The kitchen had been wrecked. The white-lacquered breakfast table and

two chairs were overturned. The other two chairs had been hammered to

pieces against everything else in sight. The refrigerator was badly

dented and scraped, the tempered glass in the oven door was shattered,

the counters and cabinets were gouged and scratched, edges splintered.

Dishes and drinking glasses had been pulled from the cupboards and

thrown against the walls, and the floor was prickled and glinting with

thousands of sharp shards. Food had been swept off the shelves of the

refrigerator onto the floor, Pickles, milk, macaroni salad, mustard,

chocolate pudding, maraschino cherries, a chunk of ham, and several

unidentifiable substances were congealing in a disgusting pool. Beside

the sink, above the cutting board, all six knives had been removed from

their rack and, with tremendous force, had been driven into the wall,

some of the blades were buried up to half their lengths in the drywall,

while two had been driven in to their hilts.

“You think they were looking for something?” Benny asked.

“Maybe.”

“No,” he said, “I don’t think so. It’s got the same look as the bedroom

in the Villa Park house. Weird. Creepy. This was done in a rage. Out

of fierce hatred, in a frenzy, a fury.

Or by someone who takes pure, unadulterated pleasure in destruction.”

Rachael could not take her eyes off the knives embedded in the wall. A

deep sick quivering filled her stomach. Her chest and throat tightened

with fear.

The gun in her hand felt different from the way it had felt just a

moment ago. Too light. Too small. Almost like a toy. If she had to

use it, would it be effective? Against this adversary?

They continued through the silent house with considerably greater

caution. Even Benny had been shaken by the psychopathic violence that

had been unleashed here.

He no longer taunted her with his boldness, but stayed close at her

side, warier than he had been.

In the large master bedroom, there was more destruction, though it was

not as extensive or as indicative of insane fury as the damage in the

kitchen. Beside the kingsize bed of black-lacquered wood and burnished

stainless steel, a torn pillow leaked feathers. The bedsheets were

strewn across the floor, and a chair was overturned. One of the two

black ceramic lamps had been knocked off a nightstand and broken, and

the shade had been crushed.

The shade on the other lamp was cocked, and the paintings hung askew on

the walls.

Benny stooped and carefully lifted a section of one of the sheets to

have a closer look at it. Small reddish spots and a single reddish

smear shone with almost preternatural brilliance on the white cotton.

“Blood,” he said.

Rachael felt a cold sweat suddenly break out on her scalp and along the

back of her neck.

“Not much,” Benny said, standing again, his gaze traveling over the

tangled sheets. “Not much, but definitely blood.”

Rachael saw a bloody handprint on the wall beside the open door that led

into the master bedroom. It was a man’s print, and large-as if a

butcher, exhausted from his hideous labors, had leaned there for a

moment to catch his breath.

The lights were on in the large bathroom, the only chamber in the house

that had not been dark when they’d reached it. Through the open door,

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