Night Falls on the Wicked - By Sharie Kohler Page 0,35

She ran a hand over its length, feeling its cold, solid strength.

Pam’s screams could still be heard, but quieter now, muted. The fight had left her. Probably the moment her daughter left her sight.

Still holding Aimee in her arms, Darby flipped on the light switch. Light flooded the room, and she looked around. It was your standard room. Bed, dresser, a small connecting bathroom.

“Where’s my momma?” Aimee whimpered against her neck, her breath a warm fan of air on her skin.

“Shhh, honey.” Darby curled up on the bed with her, hugging her little body close. “Momma’s … gone.” Darby closed her eyes in a tight blink, miserable as she uttered the words. The guilt was there, a sharp pang in her chest. She felt responsible for all of this.

“When she’s coming back?”

“I—I don’t know.” Cowardly, she supposed, but Darby couldn’t say it. She couldn’t declare that Pam wasn’t coming back. Crazy or not, she still clung to hope—to the belief that there was a chance. To not hope was to quit.

A strange silence pervaded the room. Even Pam had ceased to scream. Darby stroked Aimee’s hair and rocked her to sleep as she waited, listening. She wished she couldn’t listen, but she did. Her ears strained for the slightest sound.

And then it came. A long, low howl. So close, so very near that she thought it could have been in the room with them. Several howls joined in, and she knew it was too late.

They’d answered the moon’s call and shifted. She closed her eyes as the anguished howls rippled through her.

Then the screams began. Different from before. These screams ripped the air, without volition. This wasn’t Pam fighting for her daughter. This was anguish. Terror. This was death.

Darby fumbled a hand for the remote control on the nightstand and powered on the flat screen hanging from the wall. Clicking through channels, she found a cartoon and turned the volume up, hoping to drown out the sounds of what was happening in the other room. She crooned to Aimee and rocked her faster, hoping she still slept. As if they could outrun the reality of Aimee’s mother dying so brutal a death in the next room.

Darby inhaled a shuddering breath. She doubted she would ever outrun this night. If she survived, it would stay with her all of her days.

TWELVE

They surrounded her, hideous creatures on every side. Darby sucked in a breath and ran, spotting a break through the thick press of bodies and bolting for it.

They followed, running after her at a loping pace, toying with her, letting her stay just ahead of them but within range. Without any real hope.

Still, she ran. She fought to live, struggling with Aimee’s weight in her arms. Her legs burned, lifting high in the snow. She stumbled and fell into a soft drift, the girl still clutched in her arms.

They surrounded her. Their monstrous shapes towering, blocking out anything else as they leaned over her, jaws slavering, dripping the gore from their last kill… from Pam onto the snow-covered earth.

Darby woke with a scream trapped in her throat, her chest heaving with deep, pained breaths as the cry lodged itself inside her like a heavy stone. She swallowed, fighting to keep silent as the vision faded from her mind—but not memory.

She’d learned at an early age to hold back the screams, tired of waking her mother and then, later, her aunts. Sick of facing the worry in their eyes that her gift, her magic, was more than she could handle.

She blinked against the thin blue light of the room. The television still blared loudly, an infomercial. She patted the bed around her, searching for the remote control.

Darby found it and punched the mute button, killing the sound. She listened. No sounds reached them from outside the room. The carnage, evidently, was over.

Aimee was curled against her. She never woke. Amid it all, she had slept and Darby suspected this was God’s gift so she could cope. Darby clicked the television off, instantly drowning them in darkness. The only light came from the bedside clock on the dresser, its red numbers glowing 3:45.

She unwrapped herself from around Aimee, careful not to wake her as she slid off the bed. With silent steps, she approached the door and pressed her ear against it. Nothing. No more screaming. No more growling or howls or crashing furniture. They were gone. Or passed out. Or maybe they’d gone hunting for other victims. Either way, this could be