Dark Corner (27 page)

As though acting under the command of a single malevolent mind, the hounds stepped forward. Low growls rumbled
from their chests.

The dogs were about twenty feet away. It would take only
seconds for the canines to close the gap.

Shenice grabbed the neck of the bottle and held it like a
club, wine sloshing around inside.

"Move slowly," Trey said. He sidled alongside the car, to
the door. "Keep your eye on them. They'll think you're
afraid if you look away"

Shenice wanted to tell him that she doubted it would matter whether she met the dogs' gazes or not. She was terrified
and was sure the dogs could smell her fear, like sour sweat.

She touched the door handle.

The dogs snarled and charged.

Shenice screamed and ripped open the door, taking her
eyes off the hound behind her, but able to hear its feet scrambling across the pavement at a furious rate. Coming fast.
God. She had to move. Get in the car, fast, fast, fast.

Trey screamed.

She was halfway in the car, and Trey had gotten the driver's
side door open, but the canine, the pit bull, had clamped its
teeth on his leg. It was dragging him away, pulling him across
the parking lot, his glasses falling off his face, his hands
scrabbling for a hold but finding nothing but smooth concrete.

"Go, Shenice, go!" Trey shouted between garbled screams.

A thunderous roar, behind her. She whirled, and the rottweiler tackled her, knocked her out of the car and to the
ground.

She shrieked. The dog's sharp teeth tore into her shoulder.
Her vision blurred with tears, she remembered the bottle in
her hand. She swung it at the dog's head and connected with
a crack! Glass exploded, wine spraying everywhere, but the
hound squealed and staggered away.

Weeping, she crawled into the car. She shut both doors,
locked them.

Thank God, the key was in the ignition.

A cold pain burned in her wounded shoulder. Her blouse
was wet with blood, and she tasted blood on her lips, too.
She had bitten her tongue.

"Oh, Trey," she said, thickly. The pit bull had dragged
Trey to the corner of the parking lot. The dog stood on his
chest, deadly jaws only inches away from his face.

A man draped in dark clothing stepped into the light. Looming above Trey, he rested his hand on the canine's head.

What the hell, had this guy commanded the dogs to attack
them? What was going on?

The man looked in her direction.

The pit bull leaped off Trey and bounded toward her. The
rottweiler, having recovered from the blow with the bottle,
charged the car, too.

Shenice gunned the engine. The car started with a throaty
growl. She slammed into reverse, tires wailing.

The dogs jumped onto the hood. Snapping and barking,
they mashed their snouts against the windshield as though to
tear inside.

Screaming, Shenice wrestled the steering wheel sideways, to aim the car toward the road. She mashed the accelerator. The vehicle sprang forward with a jolt that rattled her
vertebrae.

The dogs bounded off the hood.

She bounced across the curb and veered onto the road.

Hot tears blinded her. The numbing pain that had begun
in her shoulder spread like a ravenous cancer throughout her
body. Rabies. The damn dog probably had rabies. Or some
other terrible disease. She had to get to the hospital.

Oh, Trey, I'm so sorry, sweetie. I'm sorry I couldn't save you.
I hope nothing bad happens to you. I hope you get away.

She had left her cell phone at home and would have to
call the police when she reached the hospital. But a sickening sense of foreboding made her worry that calling the cops
would be useless. Trey would be gone, she feared. As if
swallowed by the very night that she used to love.

In the candle-lit basement, Kyle placed the young man's
unconscious body at the foot of his father's bed.

"You've done well," Diallo said. He sat up eagerly. "Did
you enjoy the hunt?"

"A woman escaped," Kyle said. "She saw me. She will
tell others"

"It does not matter. You've planted a command in the
chief's mind to ignore us, and he will obey, for a while yet. It
is good that one of our hounds bit the woman"

"How did you know a dog attacked her? I didn't tell you"

"I see through their eyes," Diallo said. "As the infection
spreads through the woman, she will become one of the valduwe. It will not take long." He clapped Kyle's arm. "You've
made me proud, my prince."

"I assumed I was incompetent," Kyle said. "But if I
pleased you, that will be sufficient."

"You are my flesh. Could I be displeased with my own
flesh? I would be insane."

Kyle smiled awkwardly. It was strange and wonderful to
receive his father's praise. His father never tired of complimenting him, coaching him, fathering him. Mother had been
so terribly wrong about Diallo.

His father plunged his teeth into the human's carotid
artery.

Kyle's tongue tickled. He hoped that his father would invite him to share the blood.

But he did not. Father drained the human's blood and
threw the corpse to the floor.

I should not be selfish, Kyle thought. My father needs to
feed far more urgently than I do. If I want to feed on a human,
I should capture one for myself.

The alien thought visited his mind, uninvited. He examined the idea. Rather than being revolted, he found the
prospect quite pleasing.

Why not hunt his own prey? Who would stop him? His
father surely would not. Father would encourage him to hunt.

Mother's teachings came to mind: Only barbaric vampires
hunt human prey. Such vampires do not know any better; they
do not understand that we are the most civilized race on earth.
We are not animals, we are a sophisticated, complex species
who must learn to peacefully coexist with mankind....

But he had hunted for his father, violating Mother's vam pire code, and he had enjoyed it, intensely. He had not felt
like a degenerate. He'd felt like a conqueror.

What harm was there in hunting for himself?

As Kyle pondered his course of action, Diallo climbed off
the bed. He extended his long arms to the low ceiling.

"My strength is returning," he said. "Soon, I will be healthy
and ready to begin our mission."

But Kyle did not absorb Diallo's words. He was consumed
by his own thoughts.

"Father," Kyle said, "I think I am going out again."

"Are you?" Diallo said. "But I have already fed. I will not
need to feed again until tomorrow."

"This isn't for you," Kyle said, in an unsteady voice, and
then he added, more firmly, "This is for me"

He spun and left the basement.

Watching him leave, Diallo smiled.

In the cramped living room of a trailer home, Kyle stood
over his prey: a woman he had found outdoors sitting on the
trailer's steps, smoking a cigarette.

A sharp blow to her temple had knocked her unconscious.

Wearing a green house robe, the woman was middleaged, slightly overweight, and lived alone.

Kyle had laid her body across the sagging couch. He
knelt before her.

Her skin and clothes reeked of cigarette smoke. But the
warm flesh of her neck was smooth, and her pulse throbbed
in a hypnotic rhythm.

He parted the robe, fully exposing her throat. His hands
shook.

Across the room, a breeze stirred the flimsy curtains. An
enormous dark-feathered bird had perched on the window
ledge. A raven.

The bird glared at Kyle with disdainful eyes.

"I know who you are," he said. "Hello, Mother."

The raven cawed.

One of Mother's talents was her ability to utilize avian
creatures as watchers. He should have anticipated that she
would be spying on him. How long had she been monitoring
him and his father?

Only barbaric vampires hunt human prey ...

"You can't stop me," he said. "You've stopped me my
whole life. But not anymore, Mother."

He turned away and sank his fangs deep into the woman's
jugular vein.

Hot blood spurted into his mouth. He closed his eyes, his
body quaking. A moan escaped him; the moan spiraled into
a croon of ecstacy.

The raven watched for a while, then flew away into the
night.

Sunday morning, Chief Jackson went to the hospital to
check on Shenice Stevens. He wanted to question her about
last night, if she was awake.

The head nurse on duty was Ruby Bennett, Doc Bennett's
wife. She came around the nurse's station to speak to him
before he entered the girl's room.

"There's been no change in her condition, Chief," Ruby
said. "She's sleeping."

Jackson sighed heavily. "I'11 just look in on her for a hot
minute, then."

"Five minutes," Ruby said.

Jackson hated hospitals. They reminded him, painfully, of
his late wife. She had spent the last few months of her life
suffering in a Memphis hospital. He had visited her daily,
powerless to do anything to help her, forced to watch her
waste away into the grave.

As he removed his hat and entered the room, his mouth
grew dry.

Shenice Stevens lay on the bed, swaddled within sheets. Her mother sat in a bedside chair, her eyes red and puffy.
Jackson had seen the mother several hours ago, when he was
first summoned to the hospital, and the woman still wore the
same clothes. Damn shame. There was nothing worse in the
world than watching your child suffer.

"Hello, Mrs. Stevens" Jackson settled into another chair.
"How's the girl doing?"

Mrs. Stevens was a slim, attractive lady, a savvy businesswoman who sold real estate and never had a hair out of
place. But today, her hair was like a wild plant, and when she
looked at Jackson she blinked, confused.

"I'm the chief," Jackson said, helpfully.

Her eyes sharpened. "Chief, have you found out who's responsible for this? The dog that mauled my baby should be
decapitated, and the owner should be jailed. What are you
going to do about it?"

"I'm working on the case, ma'am." Jackson's lips tightened into a firm line. It was frustrating. The young lady had
driven to the hospital last night, bleeding profusely from a
dog bite. By the time the staff rushed her to the emergency
room, she was unconscious. She had awakened for only
brief periods since.

As far as Jackson knew, the diagnosis was rabies, or
something like it. He'd called Chester County's animal services, but they hadn't been able to locate the dog that had attacked her, which kept the vet from running rabies tests. The
girl had said a rottweiler had bitten her, and a number of
folks in town owned that breed and not all of them had
bothered to register their pets with the city. It was like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.

Mrs. Stevens confirmed that the girl and her boyfriend
had been out last night. They had not found the boy. He had
vanished.

Shenice had driven her boyfriend's car to the hospital.
That fact chipped away at Jackson's initial suspicion of foul
play.

Intuition told Jackson that the woman had been running
from something, something from which she had barely escaped with her life, and that her boyfriend had not been so
lucky.

But who was responsible? A dog? It seemed ridiculous
that one dog could maul two adults, though there had probably been similar cases of such things. Jackson had never
seen such an incident in his time as a cop.

He had no leads. He hoped the girl woke up so she could
give him a clue.

The girl's face was like a wax mask, her lips pale and
chapped. She was caramel-skinned and quite pretty; Jackson
recalled that she had won a recent town beauty pageant. But
she was only a distant echo of her healthy self.

The girl's eyes fluttered open. She blinked. Her lips
parted.

Mrs. Stevens shot out of her chair.

"Mama's here, baby." She tenderly touched her daughter's
face. "You're gonna be okay."

Jackson pressed the button to summon the nurse. Within
seconds, Ruby hurried into the room.

"Girl's waking up," Jackson said.

Shenice mumbled something inaudible.

"What she say?" Jackson said.

Mrs. Stevens shook her head. "I ... I don't know."

"The dogs," Shenice whispered.

Something about how the girl spoke the words, as if she
hinted at a deeper meaning, rendered Jackson speechless.
An icy chill fell over him.

What's wrong with me? he thought. She didn't say anything that should scare me.

"The man ... the dogs," she said.

Perspiration rolled into Jackson's eyes. He snapped out
his handkerchief and blotted the sweat.

"What is she talking about?" Mrs. Stevens said.

The man ... the dogs ...

"Girl's babbling, gotta be delirious," Jackson said. His
voice trembled.

"You might be right, Chief," Ruby said. "Please leave
now. She's not in a condition to handle any questions. I'm
calling the doctor"

Jackson didn't argue with her. He did not want to hear another word out of the girl's mouth. Her words terrified him,
and he could not put his finger on why.

He hurried out of the hospital. In the parking lot, he
jumped into his cruiser.

"I don't know a damn thing about what she said," he said,
aloud. "Don't know nothing about it at all."

But why did he feel that he was lying to himself?

Franklin knocked on David's door.

"Are you ready for our cave expedition, my friend?"
Franklin said.

It was noon. Franklin was dressed like a man going on an
African safari. He wore tall leather boots with thick soles,
khakis, a matching shirt, and a wide-brimmed hat. He carried a brown leather bag over his shoulder.

"You look a lot more prepared than I do "" David looked
down at his Timberlands, jeans, and T-shirt.

"You'll do," Franklin said.

"We only need to pick up Nia, then we can go," David
said. He grabbed his duffel bag.