The Devil Next Door

Louis fired three shots into the mass and then ran, pausing and shooting, pausing and shooting, dropping half a dozen of them. Then his gun clicked on empty and the others poured forth like hungry insects looking for something to tear and feed upon. Behind them, near the car, Michelle just stood there, supreme and malefic and insane, grinning and grinning at the idea of her husband’s grisly death.

Louis ran…

59

They had failed…all of them, failed! And the task was so simple!

The man bolted away and with surprising speed. So quickly, in fact, that it was several moments before anyone thought of pursuing him. The Huntress fumed. She bared her teeth. She screeched into the night.

“After him!” she cried with every ounce of volume she had, so loudly that her voice seem to bounce off the face of the moon itself. “BRING HIM DOWN!”

They already knew what she was capable of. They already knew what she would do to them. She did not like failure. She did not understand it. For those who failed there was the knife, there was the cutting, the rite of the blooding. Already in those precious few hours they had been together she’d already flayed two hunters.

She watched them scatter into the streets, threading into shadow like worms into meat, all anxious to be the one who brought back the pelt of the man. There would be benefits bestowed: the first choice of mates, the best food, the best weapons.

The Huntress raised her knife to the moon and howled like a wolf.

It was simple, was it not? The girl used as bait to trap the man, then the others hunters taking him, bringing him bound and broken to dump at the feet of the Huntress. Yet…the man had proven himself clever, deadly, treacherous.

As she faded into the darkness herself, she knew they would bring him down.

There were only so many places to hide in the hunting grounds and already the clan had his scent. They would cast for it, locate it, force him out of hiding and then run him, the way wild dogs would run deer to their deaths.

You can run but you can’t hide.

That gave her pause…the words seemed familiar for some reason. She liked them. She would use them again. When the man was found, she would make a spectacle of him…

60

It did no good to cry, it did no good to plead, it did no good to beg: this is what Macy learned very quickly about her captors. They were not human, not anymore. Only human minds, civilized minds, understood the high concept of compassion and these things were not human, they were animals. Dirty, smelling, vile animals.

So she did not fight.

She did not beg.

She allowed herself to be dragged naked through the streets, through secret channels of night. Her hands were bound. She was naked and smeared with gore, stinking of urine and sweat. They had thrown a noose around her throat and now she was their pet, their slave. Why they didn’t just kill her, she didn’t know. But she prayed for it.

She prayed for death.

In those rare moments when she wasn’t overwhelmed by horror and repugnance, Macy was amazed at how her world, a world that had been perfectly ordinary twenty-four hours ago, now resembled something out of prehistory. When she was lucid enough to examine things objectively, the absurdity of it floored her. It couldn’t be. It just could not be. But it was and, try as she might, this was one nightmare she could not awake from. Her world, once somewhat dull with repetition yet bright with possibility, had become this: a narrow, nameless void where she was now the victim/plaything/pet and prey of a family of predatory savages. Cannibals. Killers. Animals. Absolute fucking monsters.

And Louis? Where was Louis?

It hurt to think about him because a few days ago he was just the husband of the lady next door, that being Michelle Shears. But today, with all they’d been through, he had become something more: guardian, friend, mentor…God, too many things. Her heart pounded at the memory of him.

It was funny, but before all this she’d never said much more than hello to him when she saw him out washing his car or raking the leaves, that sort of thing. Oh, Michelle and he had those backyard parties every summer, but Mom made such a fool of herself that Macy slipped away soon as possible. So before today, she had not known him. Not really. But they had been through a lot together and she felt herself missing him terribly like some strong emotional bond had been cemented between them. She ached for him in her heart, not because she was hot for him or anything, but because he was the only thing stable she’d found on this awful day. He had been there for her. He risked his neck for her. He’d done it all without a second thought or with any ulterior motives. She held the image of his face in her mind and it calmed her. She knew that if he was alive, he would do anything he could to rescue her.

If he was alive.