“Myrnin’s school of demolition driving,” Shane said, which wasn’t true, but it was funny, and Claire didn’t correct him. “Right, thanks for the ride, let’s not do it again, thanks for not making me kill you.”
He dived out of the backseat, moving fast and keeping to the shadows. Claire wondered why, but then she saw the figures mov- ing at the back of the house.
“Get out,” Monica ordered, and forced the issue by practically climbing into Claire’s lap before she could move. “Out out out, stupid!” She jammed the car into reverse just as Claire scrambled out, and Claire only just got the door slammed before Monica hit the gas and sent the car rocketing backward down the drive. It left some scrapes on the street as she bottomed out, and the flare of sparks was pretty noticeable, but Claire supposed that whole “don’t dent it” theory was out the window while Monica was driving.
“What the hell is going on here?” Shane asked, as the sound of Monica’s convertible faded. “Because I guess you were right that it’s something.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But the house was reaching out to me, real y distressed. I can’t believe you don’t feel it.”
“It doesn’t like me. Never did. I think it always thought I was trouble for Michael, and you know what, that house is a pretty damn good judge of character because I totally was when I got here, wasn’t I? So, back door or front?”
“I saw whoever it is around back,” she said. “Front makes more sense.”
“No point in being subtle,” Shane agreed, and gave her a brief, crazy smile before he ran for the front door. She caught up with him as he slowed down and braced for a door- busting kick. She managed to stop him, put a finger to her lips, and then took the key from her pocket. She quietly unlocked the door and eased in- side.
Shane was disappointed that he couldn’t make a grand en- trance, of course, but he slipped in after her and shut and relocked the door. Nothing looked wrong in the front hallway, and she took a couple of steps forward to peer into the front parlor. Noth- ing there, either. The extinguishers were still exactly where she’d left them, and she didn’t see anything that indicated there had been an intruder.
But she felt it, knotted and tangled in her guts. The house was angry and violated and afraid, and it needed her.
She just didn’t know why. Or what it expected her to do.
“Claire,” Shane whispered, and made a series of hand gestures she was surprised she actually understood: he was telling her to go down the hall, up the stairs, and check the hidden room. He was right, too; it was, in many ways, the heart of the house, and if something was going on, it was probably happening there.
She pointed at him and raised her eyebrows in question. He pointed off to the kitchen, then made another of those utterly mysterious gestures that somehow made perfect sense to her, as if they were sharing some invisible playbook. He was going to re- trieve the hidden weapons from the pantry.
She gave him a thumbs- up and headed down the hall.
The living room didn’t look disturbed, either. It was silent, completely silent, and she felt her skin shiver into goose bumps at just how eerie it seemed . . . as if the whole house was holding its breath.
The stairs always creaked if you were careless, but she knew how to get around it. She balanced her weight carefully on the balls of her feet as she stayed on the left side, close to the wall.
There was only one slight moan of wood near the top, and she froze, listening for any change— but she heard nothing. The hall- way with their bedrooms on it stretched out in front of her, and she was nearly in the middle, heading for the hidden door, when the creature stepped out of the bathroom, right into her path.
Her brain reported creature because it couldn’t think of anything to match what she was looking at— upright, bipedal like a man, but wrong, proportioned in strange ways. The arms were too long, the face too sharp and all the wrong shape, as if bones were broken under the skin. An oddly muscled back hunched forward under the straining white tee it wore.
She’d never figured that a monster in her house would be wear- ing blue jeans and cross- trainer Nikes, either.
The worst of it, though, the absolute worst, were the eyes— gleaming acid- yellow eyes, with slitted pupils— and the hands, be- cause they sprouted claws that looked big and terrifying enough to make Wolverine feel inadequate.
Then it opened its mouth and snarled, and all the rest of it faded into insignificance beside the rows of gleaming, razor- sharp teeth.
Claire stumbled back and turned to run, but there was an- other one coming out of Michael and Eve’s bedroom, blocking her escape. This one seemed smaller, but still twice her size, and it somehow also looked female— probably because it was wearing a dress, a bright summery yellow dress, and why would a monster wear a dres , anyway? It made no sense . . .
And as she watched, it twisted, and twisted, and changed, and she felt her stomach rebelling as the creature snarled and ripped at the clothes. It pinned her with brilliant, alien, insane eyes that were straight out of hell.
What was it Shane had said?
Hellhounds.
They were still changing, but they were looking more like dogs all the time.
Her brain was babbling because it was unable to find a single thing useful to say about this situation. She was caught between two things that looked like they’d escaped from the monster vaults, and they were coming closer, trapping her between them.
And then they were sniffing her.
She threw her hands over her head and hunched down into a ball— instinct, not strategy— and the next thing she realized was that they were all over her, taking in great, noisy breaths through their noses. That was alarming and gross and somehow terrifying all over again, because it seemed so wrong. She could smell them now— a kind of sickening mix of animal musk and the kind of body spray that was supposed to make the opposite sex crawl all over you. It was a vile combination, and she found herself gagging a little, but silently, because she couldn’t manage so much as even a scream. Some instinct had locked her voice down tight. Stay quiet, stay smal , close your eyes, and make it all go away.
And, surprisingly, it did. The loud snuffling stopped, and when she dared to glance up, she saw that the two things had dismissed her and were moving off down the hallway, using all four legs now.