“You pathetic swine,” it growled. “I’m going to slit open your bowels and force you to eat what I find.”
The guys stumbled back as the creature approached. One guy in the back broke away and took off down the road. In an instant the creature was down on all fours, loping after him. It met him a few yards away, leaping onto his back and twisting his neck fatally.
Then it spun around, eyes locking on the remaining three. In an instant it was among them, claws slicing open stomachs and throats, slashing at skin, tearing at meat. When it finished, four bodies lay sprawled around its feet. Then one of its hands suddenly elongated, becoming a sharp, gleaming silver spike. The creature reared its arm back and plunged it forward, driving the spike deeply into the closest body. A sizzling sound filled the night, and Madeline watched as the body melted and sputtered, sparked and flamed, then erupted in a cascade of ashes. The creature leapt to the other bodies, thrusting the spike within, filling the night with the sounds of spitting fire. In under half a minute only ashes remained of the bodies, carried away on the wind and soaking into the pools of blood on the asphalt.
And then she was alone on the road with the creature.
The creature stood up before her, the long spike shortening and re-forming into an ink-black hand. She could see the creature bore no mark whatsoever where she’d struck it with the ax. Its black skin was smooth and unscarred. She marveled at its strange, sharklike skin and lack of features. It was shadow come to life. An ebony wraith.
A solid lump formed in her throat. She stood transfixed, watching the eyes in the darkness. They had no pupils, just pools of ruby light.
“Where is Noah?” it asked, its voice low.
She moved backward and opened her mouth, but at first no sound came out. “I-I don’t know,” she finally managed.
The creature cocked its head and looked closely at her. “He can’t be far away. Not with you here.” She could hear a hint of a foreign accent but couldn’t place it. “After all, he’s still trying to make up for it.”
“For… for what?”
“For letting her die.”
It stepped closer, breathed in deeply, then reached one long-clawed hand up to her hair. The claws combed through it gently, and she flinched away. “Does he know about you?” the creature asked.
Madeline frowned, confused by the question.
“Touch me,” it said.
Madeline didn’t move.
It lowered its hand, reaching to her side and closing around her fingers. Then it raised her hand, placing her fingers on its chest. An overwhelming sensation swept over her-a vast, incomprehensible amount of experiences, thoughts, and emotions-and one extraordinary sensation of age. It was old, older than she could fathom. Heat began to tingle in her fingers, traveling through her hand, up her arm.
And then the visions came, scorching geysers erupting behind her eyes.
A handsome young man, the creature in disguise, she realized, hopping into a hansom in Victorian London, then laughing, drunk in a tavern, conversing with its next victim, a rosy-cheeked young playwright, a linguistic genius…
Stumbling through an alley in Prague, starving, panting, hiding in shadows as a group of Nazi soldiers march by. The last one looks into the alley, sees the creature disguised as a young man in a tattered woolen coat. The soldier, sneering, pulls the gun from his holster and fires into the shadows as a terrible pain erupts in the belly of the beast…
In a parlor in Vienna, listening to an amazing pianist, a young woman, so vibrant, aching to tear into her and devour every morsel, to taste that sweet flesh, as tantalizing as the music itself…
Coughing, staggering, smelling of goat urine and feces, the creature dragging itself out of a barn in a drunken stupor, not drunk on ale, but drunk on flesh, meat from the body of a traveling bard with the ability to spin tales that spellbound listeners. The creature makes its way toward a castle in the distance. It has a hiding place there, a hidden corner of the catacombs where it can digest undisturbed…
Hiding in the shadowed galley of a Viking longboat, waiting for a cartographer to descend into waiting jaws, so eager to devour that knowledge, the thirst for places unseen but for the cartographer’s eyes, soon to be the creature’s alone…
In a grove of trees on the island of Anglesey, stalking a Druidic priest, fires erupting, cries of battle as the Romans invade, all turning to chaos, the Druid lost, wasted, dead before the creature even gets a chance…
Stalking the well at Alexandria, chariots rumbling by, the creature memorizing the routine of the Greek geophysicist, imagining the tasty meats of the brain, salivating, adjusting its garb stolen from a fellow scholar and the laurels crowning its head. Soon. So soon…
Midnight at an Egyptian festival, the full moon bright on the Nile, the young pyramid architect caught unawares in the grove of palms, the rustling of the trees’ fronds muffling the sound of eager feeding…
“What do you see?” the creature demanded.
A vague part in the back of her mind, beyond the visions, the anguish, the searing pain, remembered how to speak. But Madeline could see nothing but the visions. Her eyes filled with them, unable to see the creature, the woods. “You… were shot,” she breathed, “in Prague… and before that, you were in London, happy…”
She wrenched her hand free and gasped, sights of the real world flooding into her once more. The road. The bathroom. Pine trees.
The creature.
It stared at her, eyes wide, silent.
Neither spoke, Madeline forgetting to breathe. Images still swirled in her head, a cacophony of sounds and smells and images from a dozen other times. She could still smell bread baking in an eighteenth-century Viennese bakery, could taste a bitter root pulled from the earth in ancient Norway.
“Stefan!” Noah’s sudden cry cut through the heavy silence between them.
The creature looked past Madeline’s shoulder. Then it backed up, retreating completely into the darkness, just melting away. For a second she saw the red eyes moving in black, and then even they were gone.
Madeline heard Noah’s boots thumping on the pavement behind her, approaching quickly. She didn’t dare turn away, afraid the creature might bound back out of the darkness and take off her head with one powerful swipe.
“Madeline!” He pulled her into his arms, holding her tightly. “Did he hurt you?” Madeline’s head pressed against his chest, and he felt warm and reassuring. She shook her head.
“But-I heard screaming.”
“It wasn’t me,” she said and pulled away. Silently she indicated the blood on the asphalt.
“Oh, no,” said Noah.
Maybe it was cold, but Madeline just felt relieved. Those guys would never bother her or any other woman again. She felt oddly numb and shaky and just wanted to sit down.
Noah evidently saw this on her face. “What is it? What happened?”
Madeline shook her head. After a long pause, she said, “He… he defended me.”
“What?” Amazement.
“The blood… is from these guys who were attacking me. He just came out of nowhere and…” Madeline thought of the intensity of the moment, of the creature’s claws, fangs, the ferocity of his attack.
Noah looked as surprised as Madeline felt.
“Has this ever happened before?” she asked.
Noah raised his eyebrows in bewilderment. “No. At least, not when I’ve been around.”
“Who-” Madeline swallowed, afraid of the question she wanted to ask. “Who does he usually kill? What sort of person?”
“Two kinds of people,” Noah answered. “Carefully chosen victims, and people who get in the way of his pursuit of those victims.”