Darkfall

Penny retreated.

The thing descended two more steps, its advance betrayed only by its unblinking eyes. Darkness cloaked its form.

Breathing hard, her heart pounding louder than the music above, she backed up until she collided with a metal storage shelf. There was nowhere to turn, nowhere to hide.

The thing was now a third of the way down the stairs and still coming.

Penny felt the urge to pee. She pressed back against the shelves and squeezed her thighs together.

The thing was halfway down the stairs. Moving faster.

Overhead, in the music room, they had really gotten into the spirit of Frosty the Snowman, a lilt in their voices, belting it out with what Mrs. March always called “gusto.”

From the corner of her eye, Penny saw something in the cellar, off to the right: a wink of soft light, a flash, a glow, movement. Daring to look away from the creature that was descending the stairs in front of her, she glanced into the unlighted room — and immediately wished she hadn't.

Eyes.

Silver-white eyes.

The darkness was full of them. Two eyes shone up at her from the floor, hardly more than a yard away, regarding her with a cold hunger. Two more eyes were little farther than a foot behind the first pair. Another four eyes gleamed frostily from a point at least three feet above the floor, in the center of the room, and for a moment she thought she had misjudged the height of these creatures, but then she realized two of them had climbed onto the worktable. Two, four, six pair of eyes peered malevolently at her from various shelves along the far wall. Three more pair were at floor level near the fire door that led to the furnace room. Some were perfectly still; some were moving restlessly back and forth; some were creeping slowly toward her. None of them blinked. Others were moving out from the space under the stairs. There were about twenty of the things: forty brightly glowing, vicious, unearthly eyes.

Shaking, whimpering, Penny tore her own gaze away from the demonic horde in the cellar and looked at the stairs again.

The lone beast that had started slinking down from the landing no more than a minute ago had now reached the bottom. It was on the last step.

VI

Both to the east and to the west of Vincent Vastagliano's house, the neighbors were established in equally large, comfortable, elegantly furnished homes that might as well have been isolated country manors instead of townhouses. The city did not intrude into these stately places, and none of the occupants had seen or heard anything unusual during the night of blood and murder.

In less than half an hour, Jack and Rebecca had exhausted that line of inquiry and had returned to the sidewalk. They kept their heads tucked down to present as small a target as possible to the wind, which had grown steadily more powerful. It was now a wicked, icy, lashing whip that snatched litter out of the gutters and flung it through the air, shook the bare trees with almost enough violence to crack the brittle limbs, snapped coattails with sharp reports, and stung exposed flesh.

The snow flurries were falling in greater numbers now. In a few minutes, they would be coming down too thick to be called flurries any more. The street was still bare black macadam, but soon it would boast a fresh white skin.

Jack and Rebecca headed back toward Vastagliano's place and were almost there when someone called to them. Jack turned and saw Harry Ulbeck, the young officer who had earlier been on watch at the top of Vastagliano's front steps; Harry was leaning out of one of the three black-and-whites that were parked at the curb. He said something, but the wind ripped his words into meaningless sounds. Jack went to the car, bent down to the open window, and said, “Sorry, Harry, I didn't hear what you said,” and his breath smoked out of him in cold white plumes.

“Just came over the radio,” Harry said. “They want you right away. You and Detective Chandler.”

“Want us for what?”

“Looks as if it's part of this case you're working on.

There's been more killing. More like this here. Maybe even worse… even bloodier.”

VII

Their eyes weren't at all like eyes should be. They looked, instead, like slots in a furnace grate, providing glimpses of the fire beyond. A silver-white fire. These eyes contained no irises, no pupils, as did human and animal eyes. There was just that fierce glow, the white light from within them, pulsing and flickering.

The creature on the stairs moved down from the last step, onto the cellar floor. It edged toward Penny, then stopped, stared up at her.

She couldn't move back even one more inch. Already, one of the metal shelves pressed painfully across her shoulder blades.

Suddenly she realized the music had stopped. The cellar was silent. Had been silent for some time. Perhaps for as long as half a minute. Frozen by terror, she hadn't reacted immediately when Frosty the Snowman was concluded.

Belatedly she opened her mouth to scream for help, but the piano started up again. This time the tune was Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, which was even louder than the first song.

The thing at the foot of the stairs continued to glare at her, and although its eyes were utterly different from the eyes of a tiger, she was nevertheless reminded of a picture of a tiger that she'd seen in a magazine. The eyes in that photograph and these strange eyes looked absolutely nothing alike, yet they had something in common: They were the eyes of predators.

Even though her vision was beginning to adjust somewhat to the darkness, Penny still couldn't see what the creatures looked like, couldn't tell whether they were well-armed with teeth and claws. There were only the menacing, unblinking eyes, adance with white flame.

In the cellar to her right, the other creatures began to move, almost as one, with a single purpose.

She swung toward them, her heart racing faster than ever, her breath caught in her throat.

From the gleam of silvery eyes, she could tell they were leaping down from the shelves where they'd perched.

They're coming for me.

The two on the work table jumped to the floor.

Penny screamed as loud as she could.

The music didn't stop. Didn't even miss a beat.

No one had heard her.

Except for the one at the foot of the stairs, all the creatures had gathered into a pack. Their blazing eyes looked like a cache of diamonds spread on black velvet.

None of them advanced on her. They waited.

After a moment she turned to the stairs again.

Now, the beast at the bottom of the stairs moved, too. But it didn't come toward her. It darted into the cellar and joined the others of its kind.

The stairs were clear, though dark.

It's a trick.

As far as she could see, there was nothing to prevent her from climbing the stairs as fast as she could.

It's a trap.

But there was no need for them to set a trap. She was already trapped. They