Predator and Prey Prowlers 3 (14 page)

To scream.

C H A P T E R 7

Beyond the Ghostlands, this world of lost souls and shadows in which Artie Carroll now existed, there was something more. He knew that it waited for him there, some final destination, some afterlife. Heaven? Paradise? Some dull, smoky coffee bar where all anybody ever wanted to talk about was beat poetry, Picasso, and Kurt Cobain?

Artie did not know, though he suspected it was not the latter. Whatever yearning tugged at him, urged him on, there was a sweet benevolence to it unlike anything he had ever known. It sucked being dead. No question about that. But he felt that if he would just allow himself to be swept up into the maelstrom of warm lights that he glimpsed so often just beyond the edges of his awareness, he might be able to forget all about the regrets and longings that still tied him to the fleshworld.

It tore him apart. In his heart, Artie held his pain and grief close. He did not want to move on, to let go of those emotions, for they were the only things that made him feel as though a spark of life remained in him.

Soon,
he thought.
Soon I won’t have a choice.

He knew it was true. The pull of the maelstrom, of eternity, grew greater each day. Only by fractions, but inevitably it would be too much for him. Artie had been preparing for that from the moment he had understood that he was dead, that he was a ghost now, just a wandering spirit. When Jack and Molly had killed Owen Tanzer and most of Tanzer’s pack, the unfinished business that kept him tied to the earthly plane was complete.

The Ghostlands themselves were a dreary place, woven of clouds and dreams, shadows and phantoms. Yet from there Artie could keep an eye on those he loved, his friends and his parents, on Jack and on Molly. There was one other benefit. During his life he had been almost obsessive about conspiracies, from the Kennedy assassination to the secret war in Laos during Vietnam to the sins of omission committed by big tobacco. In the Ghostlands, one could learn almost anything from the lost souls. It gave Artie a certain amount of pleasure to learn which of his pet conspiracy theories were true and which false. But he had also learned first hand about other conspiracies, including the tacit cooperation of numerous law enforcement and government agencies around the world to pretend, on an extraordinary scale, that Prowlers were merely a myth.

It was a conspiracy that had naturally evolved over the course of thousands of years, those in authority deciding again and again what they thought their people ought to know, and what their own superiors would believe. Not the United Nations, of course, but individuals in key positions who hid what they knew in order to avoid panic or an uprising that would call their own power into question.

After all, there were so few Prowlers, or so they thought. Every time there was a sighting, or a conflict, people convinced themselves that was the end, that the Prowlers were now extinct, or nearly so. Artie knew that was far from the case. Jack and Molly and Courtney, and in his own way, Bill Cantwell, had begun an effort to seek out Prowlers individually or in packs and destroy them if they seemed to pose a threat to humans.

Artie had begun it all. He felt that he may have pulled the thread that would unravel this ancient conspiracy. It felt good. But it was becoming more and more difficult for him to pretend he had purpose here any longer. Now he was just holding on, having overstayed his welcome. It would be better for all of them, he was certain, if he would just let it go, just move on. Just die, once and for all. In a part of his consciousness he tried to ignore, Artie knew that when the Ravenous had been dealt with, it would be time for him to go.

Nothing left for him to do, to contribute.

No more Jack. No more Molly.

Molly.

All through this strange night, Artie had stayed with her, knowing that time was short and unwilling to give up a moment of these last days he had to be near her. Now, nothing more than a specter, a flutter of the wind, a shadow glimpsed from the corner of her eye, he hovered by her bed and watched as she slept. Her restless tossing and turning had caused her shirt to slide up just beneath her breasts and though he knew she must be warm, Artie bristled at that exposure. She seemed so vulnerable. He wished he could reach out and fix her shirt, pull it down to cover her again.

But he could not touch her. Not ever again.

He could only watch.

And in that crystalline moment of understanding, he was shamed.
Only watch. But it isn’t just watching. I’m
haunting
her.

Then, as the ache in his soul deepened, he heard a sound from the hall. After what had just happened with Bill, he would not be surprised if Courtney or even Jack were having trouble sleeping. Curious, he drifted toward Molly’s door.

A face peered around the corner.

Not Courtney. Not Jack.

The man had dirty blond hair, darker than Artie’s had been in life, but too long as Artie’s was. A stubble that wasn’t quite a beard grew on his chin and his gray eyes sparkled with an intensity even the ghost could feel. There was a power, a raw, primal energy to his very presence, and Artie knew what it was at once.

Not just a burglar. A Prowler. The intruder slipped into Molly’s room and Artie could hear a low rumble coming from the monster’s gullet. Fur began to spurt up through the skin as it moved closer to her, breathed in her scent.

“No!” he yelled, as loud as he could. “Get away from her!”

He even tried to grab the Prowler, but of course he could not. In his soul, in his mind, Artie still recalled what they had done to him the night he was killed, the way they had torn at him. Images of that same savagery inflicted upon Molly flickered through his mind, of Molly suffering the loneliness and loss he had felt in all his time in the Ghostlands.

“No, damn it!” he screamed again.

The Prowler did not so much as twitch. It neither heard nor sensed him. But as Artie screamed again, the monster began to transform fully, the façade of humanity torn away to reveal the beast within.

Molly slept on, blissfully unaware.

“
Jack!”

In the depths of hard-earned slumber, Jack heard the voice calling out his name. Even in his subconscious mind, he tried to ignore it, to push it away. His eyes burned beneath the lids, his throat was dry, his joints ached. Sleep had been difficult to come by this night and so he clung to it with desperation.

“
Jack! Wake up, wake up, wake up!”

No,
he thought, but it was more plea than denial. His eyes opened, heavy and itchy as though someone had poured sand into them. He listened, eyes slitted, to see if it had been a dream or something real. Then Artie manifested in front of him, the lower portion of the ghost barely coalesced into any form at all. The phantom’s bottomless black eyes were wide and his expression frantic.

“
Prowler. In Molly’s room.”

The weight of those words suffocated Jack. He lay completely still, considering.
The bed’ll creak if I move; will he hear it? But I might just move in my sleep, turning over. So slow, then. Very slow.

Like a serpent he slid from the bed to the floor, screaming silent prayers. With each tiny noise of bed and floor he was tempted to pause to listen, but knew that would be folly. The Prowler might come after him before Jack was ready, or it might just kill Molly instantly at the first noise.

No time for self-doubt.

Jack reached under the bed and his fingers closed around the barrel of the pump shotgun he hid under there. It wasn’t all that long ago that he abhorred guns, a feeling he had developed partially because of Artie’s crusade against them. Never had he imagined he would have a weapon in his house, but it had come to seem necessary after their skirmishes with the Prowlers.

Now he rejoiced at the feel of the steel against his flesh. Guns were instruments of death, and he would never turn one against a human being. But there were things in the dark corners of the world that had to be met with savagery equal to their own.

Jack stood, loaded shotgun in his hands. The ghost watched him, its gossamer form wavering, barely holding the human silhouette that made it recognizable as Artie. Fear had done that, Jack realized. Artie had lost his focus. With a single brush at the air, Jack waved the ghost away, nodding in the direction of Molly’s room.

“
You want me to check it out, see where he is in the room?”
Artie asked, getting it instantly.

They had been best friends most of their lives. And after.

Jack nodded. The reluctance in Artie’s expression was painful to see. The ghost said nothing more, but Jack understood nevertheless. The last thing Artie wanted to do was go back in that room and find that he was too late. But it had to be done. He was nothing but a shade, a phantasm, and as such, invisible to the Prowler.

Artie floated out of the room. Barefoot, Jack hurried along behind him, careful to avoid the floorboards he knew squeaked. In the hall, Artie passed right through the wall into Molly’s room and was gone. A horrible feeling slipped into Jack’s mind, curled tendrils of almost crippling dread into his brain. Despite the heat of the night and the sweat on his forehead and his bare chest, he felt a chill snake through him.

Too many things had gone wrong in one day, one long, seemingly infinite day. He had always believed that a new dawn brought a new chance to figure things out, but after all that had happened, the way that he kept awakening to new horrors this night, it felt like the dawn would never come.

He held his breath, hoping Artie would tell him something he could use, but Jack dared not wait more than a few seconds. No sound came from within Molly’s room and that ominous silence weighed heavy around him, as though trying to crush him.

From within, suddenly, he heard the rustle of sheets. Molly began to mutter something in a sleepy drawl and then her voice rose abruptly in alarm. It was cut off with a strangled cry and a low growl that seemed almost like a purr, a sound of animal pleasure.

Before Jack could run into the room, Artie shouted his name.

“
Say something!”
Artie told him from within. “
But don’t let on that you’re armed.”

Thoughts careened through his mind, collided, and he pushed them away. There was no time for thought, only instinct. He had to do as Artie said.

“Molly?” Jack asked, praying that the anxious quaver in his voice would be heard as the weariness of someone woken in the middle of the night. “You having a bad dream or something?”

Jack froze, there in the hall. He could have moved closer to the door, but the Prowler knew he was out here now. As the thought skittered across his mind he understood what Artie hoped for. That it would forget Molly and come for him instead.

His fingers were wrapped painfully tight around the shotgun’s barrel. He would have to pump it before he could fire, but if the Prowler knew he had a weapon . . .

Within her bedroom, Molly screamed his name, trying to warn him. Almost in that same instant there came a crash and her voice was cut off again.

“
It’s coming, Jack! Now!”
Artie cried.

But he did not need the ghost to tell him. The Prowler had been furtive and clever, a quiet killer. Now it snarled loudly and its tread upon the ground was clamorous. It leaped out into the hallway in front of him, a slavering thing with golden fur and blood on the claws of one hand—
Molly’s blood.
Its eyes seemed to dance with violence and amusement, but then it saw the weapon and its lips curled back with surprise and fury.

Jack racked a shell into the shotgun’s chamber.

The Prowler lunged for him, one huge hand drawn back, claws slashing down.

The shotgun thundered in Jack’s hands. The blast caught the Prowler in the left shoulder, tore a chunk of flesh and fur out of the beast, spattered the wall with blood. With a bark of pain, the monster spun, twisted around by the impact.

But it didn’t go down.

The thing was agile as hell and it used the momentum of the shotgun blast to take off in the other direction. Jack pumped the slide again, took aim and fired, and a piece of the frame blew off the kitchen door as the Prowler fled, bleeding.

“I’ll be back, Jack,” the monster snarled as he disappeared into the darkness of the kitchen.

Swearing loudly, Jack ran after him, racking another shell into the chamber. As he passed his sister’s bedroom he heard Courtney call out to him, saw her limping toward the door in his peripheral vision, but Jack did not slow down.

Just inside the kitchen he stopped and leveled the shotgun, aiming at the dark, bestial form silhouetted in the window. His finger tightened on the trigger and the shotgun bucked in his hands. He had aimed high, and the open window shattered with the cascade of broken glass.

The Prowler was gone.

“Damn it!” Jack pumped the shotgun again and went to the window. He stood back carefully, aimed at what remained of the window, and tried to see outside. After a moment’s anxious hesitation, he stuck his head out the window. It was much too far down to jump without something to break the fall, even for a Prowler. From above him there came a low grunt. Jack glanced up, searching for some sign of the intruder. He heard the sound of receding footsteps as the Prowler ran off across the rooftops on Nelson Street. For a moment, Jack considered trying to climb out the window and onto the roof to give chase, but he knew the thought was foolish. Never mind the drop to the street below if he lost his grip, the monster was much faster than he was.

By the time he would have gotten onto the roof, the Prowler would likely already have scrambled down some fire escape on a building up the block. Jaw set in anger and frustration, he ducked back into the kitchen. The shotgun was warm in his hands as he rushed back to Molly’s room. He had pushed aside his fear for her in order to drive away the intruder, but now it came rushing upon him again, a knot of anxiety tightly twisted in his gut.

Molly sat on the floor, her back to a small bookcase that had been jarred somehow, knocking books and knickknacks to the floor. Several small pieces had shattered, ceramic animals and a crystal vase. He could barely make out the shards in the dim room, the only illumination coming from the streetlights outside. With her bad leg, Courtney could not crouch and so she was seated on the floor beside Molly, holding the girl in her arms.