in series with each featuring a different animal. This page showed a wasp laying eggs inside a caterpillar, and what I could read of the caption in the bad light said the eggs would hatch inside the living animal and begin to feed.
There was a Post-it note sticking out of the book. Wally must have bookmarked a page. I grabbed the book off the floor and flipped through it.
Immediately, the darkness began to deepen as though someone was dialing down a dimmer switch. At the same time, I heard a sound that was part hiss, part electrical crackle.
Damn. When I’d moved the book, I’d uncovered a small sigil on the closet floor. Now, with the spell exposed, something around me was waking up.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I slapped the book back down over the sigil, covering it again. It didn’t work. The room kept getting darker, and the hissing grew louder.
I swept the edge of my ghost knife through the sigil, cutting the spell in half. It came apart in a jet of black steam and iron-gray sparks—for all the good it did.
The darkness started to feel solid, like a thickening gel. I put my back against the wall, desperately afraid of being trapped. A dark line hovered in the air in the center of the room, as though something I couldn’t see was blocking the light. It was dull black at the top and progressively lighter gray down toward the floor, and it was between me and the door. Things were getting darker every moment, and the line was moving slowly upward toward the bulb.
Inside the line, something moved. Then, from the very darkest spot, an arm reached into the room.
I squeezed off two shots at it, as much to sound the alarm for Annalise as to injure it. One of the bullets must have struck home, because the thing drew back.
Incredible. A predator that could be hurt by a mundane weapon. I turned back to the wall and slashed my ghost knife through the plasterboard in one large circle. I shoved at it, trying to bull my way through, but the air was so thick I could barely use half my strength on it. I held my breath. Whatever this stuff was, I didn’t want it in my lungs. The darkness pressed against me; it had weight.
Something suddenly clamped down on my right biceps. It looked like an eagle’s talon, but it was huge—easily bigger than my own hand—and it was mottled, greenish, and flaking. It squeezed, and the pressure was enormous.
My ghost knife was trapped in my right hand. I placed the revolver against the thing’s wrist and fired off another shot. The sound of the gunshot near my face was like a whole new kind of punishment, and burning gunpowder struck my lips and ear.
The bullet deflected off the thing’s bones, but not before tearing through its thin flesh. The pain must have startled it, because it released me. I pivoted into the corner of the closet. The room was still dim and gray at the edges, and I could see the talon where it had reached out of the darkness. I swung the ghost knife up at it, but my arm wouldn’t work right, and I struck it along one talon instead of straight through the leg.
The end of the talon fell away, clunking onto the floor, and the crackling hiss turned into a sort of grinding shriek.
The darkness was flowing around and against me now, and I could barely see. The weight of it held me against the wall and made it difficult to lift my arms. The section of the wall I’d cut burst with a loud
I grabbed the edge of the hole, but the plaster broke off in my hand. At that moment, I heard and felt the whole wall buckle outward. The predator, whatever it was, was entering our world, and it was too big to fit in Wally’s bedroom.
I reached the hole in the wall just as a talon scraped along my back. I cried out; each talon was like a slashing knife, and I could feel the darkness inside my nose and sinuses, wriggling and alive. I shot at it again, but my grip was all wrong and the recoil knocked the gun out of my hand.
Then I was through the hole, stumbling across the back of a toppled shelving unit and falling to my hands and knees. This predator had gotten inside me, and it
A talon caught my right ankle. I spun immediately to swipe the ghost knife through its wrist, but it was so strong that it was already dragging me back. Fast, so fast—I knew I’d be pulled into that dark line before I could cut myself free.
The back door burst open and Talbot charged in, revolver at the ready. I could barely see him through the gray, but I shouted: “It’s got me! Shoot it!”
There was nothing to shoot, not really. There was only a hole in the wall and a growing shadow spreading through it, but Talbot aimed his weapon into the darkness and squeezed off five shots, handling the recoil better than I had, and sending each round at a slightly different angle.
The talon released me after the third shot. “Let’s go!” I shouted. He pulled me through the door, my injured ankle banging painfully across the back of the metal shelves. I struggled to get my good left foot under me and hopped along beside him, fleeing the house as fast as I could.
Annalise was running toward us. “Boss—” I yelled, but I didn’t get to finish because just then the washing machine smashed through the wall and flew by me like it had been flung by a tornado.
Talbot jumped away, even though it had already gone by. I lost my balance, stepped onto my injured foot, and fell.
All the windows along the front burst outward, shutters and boards along with the glass. The whole cabin buckled out like an aboveground pool overfilled with water. I heard the groans of straining wood along with the bursts and cracks of breaking beams. The roof split and began to spread apart.
Annalise plucked a green ribbon from her vest and threw it into the open doorway.
At the same moment, that claw came rushing out of the darkness. The ribbon fluttered between the predator’s fingers and disappeared into the darkness. With her left hand, Annalise caught the middle of the creature’s three
