Chapter Thirty-Six

Gabriel watched Rocky’s sister enter the home; she hesitated briefly at the door. She sensed danger. All creatures did, it was instinct. When a predator was near, no matter if you were a rat or a man, you felt it. It started as a hyper sense of awareness that something, an unknown variable, wasn’t right, causing one to proceed with caution, checking dark corners, turning on lights and trying to convince one’s mind and body that everything was okay. Gabriel loved this dread-riddled anticipation. He had watched it in a great many of the people he’d killed these last few weeks. It thrilled him and acted as a sort of appetiser before the main course. Of course, not all the recent kills had come that way. There had been others he just moved on with little to no notice. And those too gave him exceptional gratification. In one blink life is full and their own, the next it is his and they are no more. That power to snuff out a soul in an instant was the power of a god.

He moved along from window to window, daring her to see him. She draped a teal sweater over the back of the sofa before striding down the hall. Through the boy’s window, he watched her duck her head into the darkened room. Once she left the doorway, he let himself inside.

Gliding toward the hallway, now an alley of shadow in the day’s fading light, he placed himself on the ceiling of the girl’s bedroom. From above, he listened to her move around the room, the floor giving out quiet moans as she did. He was certain she and her family knew the spots that made sounds well and had grown accustomed to hearing them. For some, it was the high-pitched hiss of a metal heating radiator; for others, the soft creak of a house that shifts with the changing of the temperatures or humidity.

For all her worry upon arriving home, he sensed she had relaxed, assuming she was safe.

She came out of the bedroom and moved down the hall to the living room. Gabriel crawled on the ceiling above her, trailing slightly, smelling her scent, a slight musk covered by hairspray and a fruity perfume. Gabriel bit back the saliva cutting loose in his mouth and punctured his bottom lip with one of his teeth.

Julie Zukas picked up the telephone’s handset and began to dial when a single droplet of blood from Gabriel’s lip dripped onto her milky-white wrist.

She began to tremble as she stared at the small crimson blotch against her flesh.

She slowly raised her chin.

Gabriel, done with pleasantries, hissed and put his fangs on full display before descending upon her.

* * *

Ten minutes later, he was leaning against the kitchen counter as Clarise Zukas came through the front door. He watched, silent and still, while she ventured to the living room without noticing him. She stopped at the sight of her daughter lying motionless on the couch.

She leaned down to see if Julie was all right then she shot bolt upright, hands to her mouth.

“What in Heaven’s name?” she said aloud.

Gabriel was behind her when he whispered into her ear, “What do you say the three of us take this party somewhere else?”

She slowly turned her head.

Her eyes bulged from their sockets as she took him in.

A scream roiled up from the depths of her bruised soul.

He cuffed her behind the ear, rendering her unconscious before the shriek could escape.

There would be plenty of time for screaming.