The eyes looked back at him and took his measure and found him lacking.
“Mark! Please! Don’t let them do this!” Donna was panicked, and he couldn’t find any fault in that. He was terrified himself; imagining the damage the teeth would cause and already knowing the reasons for the attack.
“Oh, Donna. I’m so sorry, honey.”
The stranger spoke again, his voice a deadly rumble. “Are you now? You certainly weren’t crying then, were you?”
“She has nothing to do with this!” He tried one last time to break free, and felt the fingers holding his head push forward, driving thick nails into his scalp. The pain was enough to make him stop, to make him scream out again.
“I know. She’s innocent in this. That’s what makes it such a shame.”
The beast holding Donna looked at the man behind Mark and turned its head quizzically.
Two words and every hope that Mark had of coming out of this alive fell to pieces. Two words and his entire world exploded into ruin.
The man said, “Do it.”
Without any hesitation, the beast opened its mouth and lunged forward, pulling Donna closer in at the same time. Her flailing arms beat up and down on the creature’s head, her fists striking as hard as they could, even as those teeth ripped through her shirt and carved trenches into her breasts, her sternum. Donna bucked hard, her hands unclenching and grabbing at the thick fur around the thing’s head, pulling, trying to wrench the pain away.
A shower of bright red blood came out of the wounds even as Mark heard the bones in Donna’s chest break. The teeth let go for an instant and then sank in deeper as the nightmare in front of him broke her chest cavity open. When it finished ripping a wound wide enough, the foul thing began shredding the organs underneath. Donna let out one more powerful screech and her body stiffened with agony. The monster reared back and pulled a mass of raw, bloodied flesh from inside Donna. Viscera painted her body, her face, the floor, and her dark-furred assailant in a dozen shades of crimson.
As Donna’s body relaxed the creature let her drop to the ground, a lifeless wreck, a ruined parody of the woman Mark had married.
Mark stared, too stunned to even move, barely even breathing as his wife hit the floor. The kids were on the ground, gasping out jagged sobs, their faces tear-stained and red.
Mark was shoved forward and stumbled, his foot catching on the leg of one of the damned beasts surrounding him. He fell, his hands outstretched to catch himself, and landed across Donna’s still form. Warm blood covered his hands and face, his left palm slipped into the hole in her chest cavity, bending his fingers almost to the breaking point, and his elbow slammed into her face, breaking her nose.
Mark backed away in a raw panic, screaming hoarsely as he realized what was covering him. He wanted to act, wanted to grab his shotgun and kill the bastard that had just murdered Donna, but his body wasn’t listening. He wanted to protect his children, too, but that was beyond his abilities.
The four beasts leaped across the living room, knocking aside the coffee table and scattering a week’s worth of magazines and unread mail in the process.
Dorothy cried on the TV screen and the children, who meant more to Mark than anything else in the world, cried with her as they were surrounded.
“Wait.” The voice came from the man again, the stranger who looked so damned familiar.
Mark turned his head slowly, barely able to manage the feat, and blinked Donna’s blood from his eyes.
“Take them. Don’t kill them.” The man was looking at him, his eyes blue again. “Don’t harm a hair on their heads.”
He moved over to Mark again and squatted on his haunches, his right foot crushing Donna’s hand in the process. Donna made no noise of protest. She couldn’t, she was dead. Dead, dead, dead, dead, dea—
“Pay attention, Loman.” The man slapped him across the face hard enough to leave a heavy red mark and bring Mark out of his daze.
“Why…? Why did you?” The tears came then, tinged with a dark pink color, washing the last of her blood from his eyes.
“Shut up. Pay attention. I’ve decided to give you a fighting chance; more than you and yours ever gave, I suspect. You’re going to answer my questions, or I swear to you I’ll mail you back a piece of your children every day for a month. Do you understand me?”
He didn’t trust himself to speak. Mark nodded instead.
“Good. I want their names. The names of everyone who was with you. I want their addresses and phone numbers. You do this, and your children get to live.”
Even as he spoke Ellen was screaming, her cries muffled by the furry hand cupped over her face. Lou was silent and staring into space. Both of them were held close to bestial bodies, dwarfed by the things that carried them.
Mark knew all the information he needed and got it out of his Rolodex under the supervision of the stranger with the hellhounds for pets. He handed over the five business cards. He could almost think again, could almost reason, and the grief he felt was gradually becoming something else.
“I know you want me dead, Loman. I understand your anger.” The man put the cards away in his parka and sealed the zipper over the pocket as if he were carefully securing a vital treasure.
“I’ll see you dead, too, you bastard.”
“Maybe you will.” The stranger nodded his head. “You’ll get your chance. Hide the body of your wife or call the police. It won’t matter in the long run.” He looked at Mark with a fury of his own, a dark rage that wanted to come to the surface. “By now your children are gone. If you’re smart, you won’t warn your friends. You might need them. Like I said, I’m going to give you a chance. If you behave, you and your friends will get your children back. If not, I’ll kill them all and then I’ll come back for you. Do you understand me?”
What could he do? Mark nodded.
“I already have your name and number. I’ll call you sometime soon. Once we’re ready for you. Don’t be stupid. Don’t try to find us before it’s time. I crossed over five hundred miles of this country to get to you, to track you down. Don’t think I won’t do it again.”
The stranger turned and moved toward the open front door with the grace of a gymnast, and headed back into the storm.
Moments later the house was silent except for the movie that was playing in the living room and the sound of the wind howling out its cold dismay.
For a time, Mark Loman joined in its song.
Scott Lassiter was in a good mood for the first time in weeks, right before the phone rang. The business deal he’d been trying to work out finally went through, his commission on the sale of all the equipment needed for a national chain of discount warehouse stores was now a reality instead of a pipe dream, and his commission was enough to add two zeroes to his yearly income.
So he was just as happy as he could be when he reached over, grabbed his cell from its holder and answered the phone.
His joy lasted exactly seven seconds.
“Hello?”
“Scott!?!” He recognized Allison’s voice instantly. His wife of two years and the girl he’d dreamed of being with for as long as he could remember. Her voice was ripe with fear and his heart almost froze inside his chest.