His Aunt Megan screamed. Perez fell to his knees, gagging and flailing. The hooded man pulled out the knife with a wet, splotching noise.
The hood slipped off of the man’s head; Chris saw the milky eyes, the flesh on his face melted by fire. He gasped.
Perez fell forward in the doorway, making it impossible to shut the door. Blood seeped into the cracks between the floorboards.
The intruder stepped over Perez’s body. Chris backed up, set his feet, and swung the baseball bat. It glanced off the side of the intruder’s head. Chris saw the skull indent a bit, but it didn’t slow the guy down at all.
He came at Chris with the knife, slashing in an arc. Chris blocked him with the bat. Hope came rushing in like a soldier performing a banzai charge. She screamed and drove the knife between the guy’s ribs. The knife stuck. Hope jerked her hand away.
The knife jutted from the man’s ribcage. There was no blood. None from the head wound, either.
The intruder slashed again. Chris backed up, hit the bottom step, and fell onto the stairs. He scrambled to his feet, backing up and ascending. The guy kept coming. He swung in an arc, the knife narrowly missing his legs.
This time it was Aunt Megan that charged. With a howl, she drove the knife into the guy’s back. A soft grunt escaped his lips, but again, it didn’t slow him down.
Chris was halfway up the stairs. He raised the bat over his head and swung downward. The man slipped to the side and the bat slammed into his collarbone. It gave with a crack. Still kept coming.
Aunt Megan was trying to yank the knife out of the guy’s back. He turned and swatted her. She lost her balance and tumbled down the stairs. Something popped and she screamed.
Chris hurried up the stairs, intent on luring the creep away. When he reached the top of the stairs, he said, “Come get some, you ugly motherfucker.”
The intruder took the challenge. He stormed up the stairs. Chris got off a half-swing before the guy shoved him backward. He tumbled into the bathroom, dropping the bat.
The man was over him, the dead eyes looking down on him. There was no defense; the knife swung in a vicious arc. He put his arms up, but still the blade drove through and plunged into his chest.
It felt like someone knocked the wind out of him. Then the somewhat dull sensation in his chest turned into searing pain.
There was no breath. He tried to scream, but nothing came out.
Maria pulled up to the Peters’ home to find a shit storm. There was a dead cop in the doorway. It was Perez. He’d been dispatched to check on the kids.
“Shit,” Martz said. “He beat us here.”
She put in a call for backup and the two of them hopped out of the unmarked. They drew their side arms and moved to the front of the house.
Maria saw the amount of blood pooled underneath Perez. “Goddammit.”
Chris’ Aunt Megan was at the bottom of the stairs in a heap. She gritted her teeth. Her skin had gone pale gray. The worst of it was her leg: the bones below her knee were perpendicular to the rest of her leg. Both the bones had snapped when she fell down the stairs.
Upstairs, she could see the man, his back to her. He stood in the bathroom doorway. She didn’t hear Chris, and that terrified her.
She had nothing to use as a weapon; both the knives were still sticking out of the guy. He was a walking butcher’s block.
Hope heard someone behind her. She turned to see Detective Greco stepping over the dead police officer. She had her gun drawn. “Oh, thank God. She needs an ambulance.”
“Where is he?” Greco said.
The blonde detective, Martz, entered the house.
“Upstairs.”
“Get her an ambulance,” Greco said.
Hope looked upstairs; the intruder was gone. She could see the bottoms of Chris’ sneakers. He wasn’t moving. Dread pulsed through her; he hadn’t made any noise.
Detective Greco was the first one up the stairs; Martz followed right after.
Maria took a guess at which way the guy had gone. She leaned against the wall and swept the gun to her left, aiming at one end of the hallway. There were bloody footprints going into the bedroom; big ones.
Chris Peters was on his back in the bathroom. Like Perez, blood had spread out on the floor underneath him. He stared up at the ceiling. The front of his shirt was soaked with blood.
The bastard killed a kid. “Fucker.”
She had business with him in the bedroom. The room was all shadows. He could be waiting to spring. The question was: Did they wait for backup to arrive and keep him hemmed in, or go in after him?
Martz knelt by the kid and felt for a pulse on his neck. “It’s weak, but it’s there.”
Maria squinted, trying to look into the darkness. She heard glass smash and stormed into the bedroom. The intruder leapt out the window.
She looked down to see a chair lying in the yard. The man darted across the yard, coat flapping behind him. She took aim and squeezed off two shots, hit him dead center of the back. He kept going, staggering as he went.
Maria heard the sirens coming, an ambulance and backup officers on the way. She had an earpiece in and a mic on her jacket. “Suspect’s fleeing the yard at one-three-six Bloomfield. Heading east toward Parker Avenue.”
She took off down the stairs. “Stay with them,” she yelled back to Martz.
Once again, she hopped the dead cop’s body. This time, she ran for her unmarked and got in. She backed out of the driveway and headed toward Parker Avenue, the street adjacent to
