Darkfall

cold clammy hands was coming toward him. Such a fantastic notion was wildly out of character for Vince Vastagliano, who had the imagination of a tree stump, but he couldn't dispel the superstitious dread that had come over him.

Fear brought a watery looseness to his joints.

His heart, already beating fast, now thundered.

He would never make it to the front door alive.

He turned and clambered up the steps. He stumbled once in the blackness, almost fell, regained his balance. By the time he reached the master bedroom, the noises behind him were more savage, closer, louder — and hungrier.

Vague shafts of weak light came through the bedroom windows, errant beams from the streetlamps outside, lightly frosting the eighteenth century Italian canopy bed and the other antiques, gleaming on the beveled edges of the crystal paperweights that were displayed along the top of the writing desk that stood between the two windows. If Vince had turned and looked back, he would have been able to see at least the bare outline of his pursuer. But he didn't look. He was afraid to look.

He got a whiff of a foul odor. Sulphur? Not quite, but something like it.

On a deep, instinctual level, he knew what was coming after him. His conscious mind could not — or would not — put a name to it, but his subconscious knew what it was, and that was why he fled from it in blind panic, as wide-eyed and spooked as a dumb animal reacting to a bolt of lightning.

He hurried through the shadows to the master bath, which opened off the bedroom. In the cloying darkness he collided hard with the half-closed bathroom door. It crashed all the way open. Slightly stunned by the impact, he stumbled into the large bathroom, groped for the door, slammed and locked it behind him.

In that last moment of vulnerability, as the door swung shut, he had seen nightmarish, silvery eyes glowing in the darkness. Not just two eyes. A dozen of them. Maybe more.

Now, something struck the other side of the door. Struck it again. And again. There were several of them out there, not just one. The door shook, and the lock rattled, but it held.

The creatures in the bedroom screeched and hissed considerably louder than before. Although their icy cries were utterly alien, like nothing Vince had ever heard before, the meaning was clear; these were obviously bleats of anger and disappointment. The things pursuing him had been certain that he was within their grasp, and they had chosen not to take his escape in a spirit of good sportsmanship.

The things. Odd as it was, that was the best word for them, the only word: things.

He felt as if he were losing his mind, yet he could not deny the primitive perceptions and instinctive understanding that had raised his hackles. Things. Not attack dogs. Not any animal he'd ever seen or heard about.

This was something out of a nightmare; only something from a nightmare could have reduced Ross Morrant to a defenseless, whimpering victim.

The creatures scratched at the other side of the door, gouged and scraped and splintered the wood. Judging from the sound, their claws were sharp. Damned sharp.

What the hell were they?

Vince was always prepared for violence because violence was an integral part of the world in which he moved. You couldn't expect to be a drug dealer and lead a life as quiet as that of a schoolteacher. But he had never anticipated an attack like this. A man with a gun — yes. A man with a knife — he could handle that, too. A bomb wired to the ignition of his car — that was certainly within the realm of possibility. But this was madness.

As the things outside tried to chew and claw and batter their way through the door, Vince fumbled in the darkness until he found the toilet. He put the lid down on the seat, sat there, and reached for the telephone. When he'd been twelve years old, he had seen, for the first time, the telephone in his uncle Gennaro Carramazza's bathroom, and from that moment it had seemed to him that having a phone in the can was the ultimate symbol of a man's importance, proof that he was indispensable and wealthy. As soon as he'd been old enough to get an apartment of his own, Vince had had a phone installed in every room, including the john, and he'd had one in every master bath in every apartment and house since then. In terms of self-esteem, the bathroom phone meant as much to him as his white Mercedes Benz. Now, he was glad he had the phone right here because he could use it to call for help.

But there was no dial tone.

In the dark he rattled the disconnect lever, trying to command service.

The line had been cut.

The unknown things in the bedroom continued to scratch and pry and pound on the door.

Vince looked up at the only window. It was much too small to provide an escape route. The glass was opaque, admitting almost no light at all.

They won't be able to get through the door, he told himself desperately. They'll eventually get tired of trying, and they'll go away. Sure they will. Of course.

A metallic screech and clank startled him. The noise came from within the bathroom. From this side of the door.

He got up, stood with his hands fisted at his sides, tense, looking left and right into the deep gloom.

A metal object of some kind crashed to the tile floor, and Vince jumped and cried out in surprise.

The doorknob. Oh, Jesus. They had somehow dislodged the knob and the lock!

He threw himself at the door, determined to hold it shut, but he found it was still secure; the knob was still in place; the lock was firmly engaged. With shaking hands, he groped frantically in the darkness, searching for the hinges, but they were also in place and undamaged.

Then what had clattered to the floor?

Panting, he turned around, putting his back to the door, and he blinked at the featureless black room, trying to make sense of what he'd heard.

He sensed that he was no longer safely alone in the bathroom. A many-legged quiver of fear slithered up his back.

The grille that covered the outlet from the heating duct — that was what had fallen to the floor.

He turned, looked up at the wall above the door. Two radiant silver eyes glared at him from the duct opening. That was all he could see of the creature. Eyes without any division between whites and irises and pupils. Eyes that shimmered and flickered as if they were composed of fire. Eyes without any trace of mercy.

A rat?

No. A rat couldn't have dislodged the grille. Besides, rats had red eyes — didn't they?

It hissed at him.

“No, “ Vince said softly.

There was nowhere to run.

The thing launched itself out of the wall, sailing down at him. It struck his face. Claws pierced his cheeks, sank all the way through, into his mouth, scraped and dug at his teeth and gums. The pain was instant and intense.

He gagged and nearly vomited in terror and revulsion, but he knew he would strangle on his own vomit, so he choked it down.

Fangs tore at his scalp.

He lumbered backward, flailing at the darkness. The edge of the sink slammed painfully into the small of his back, but it was nothing compared to the white-hot blaze of pain that consumed his face.

This couldn't be happening. But it was. He hadn't just stepped into the Twilight Zone; he had taken a giant leap into Hell.

His scream was muffled by the unnameable thing that clung to his head, and he couldn't get his breath. He grabbed hold of the beast. It was cold and greasy, like some denizen of the sea that had risen up from watery depths. He pried it off his face and held it at arm's length. It screeched and hissed and chattered wordlessly, wriggled and twisted, writhed and jerked, bit his hand, but he held onto it, afraid to let go, afraid that it would fly straight back at him and go for his throat or for his eyes this time.

What was it? Where did it come from?

Part of him wanted to see it, had to see it, needed to know what in God's name it was. But another part of