The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [98]
“No, it wasn’t a feydrim. It was … something else. Simian in a way. What do we do?”
“The radio. Get the radio.”
Grace grabbed the slim walkie-talkie off the nightstand. She pressed a button, held the unit to her ear. “Erics,” she hissed. “Erics, can you hear me?” Static popped and crackled. “Erics, come in. We need you.” Still no answer. Grace threw down the radio. “Where the hell is he?”
“There,” Travis said.
He was peering through the gap in the curtains again. Grace hurried next to him.
“Look,” Travis said. “Down in the parking lot.”
It took her eyes a long moment to find what he was seeing: a bulky, broad-shouldered form stood beside Stewart’s black sedan. Then the form looked up, and she saw his face in a stray beam from the streetlamp. Erics. His head moved from side to side. He was searching—for Stewart, no doubt.
Up here, Grace wanted to scream. She started to push aside the curtain, to wave frantically to him.
She halted in mid-action. From the darkness beyond the streetlamp, shadows appeared. There were two of them this time. They hunched low to the asphalt, using both arms and legs to propel themselves forward in a swift lope. Erics saw them, reached inside his suit coat, drew out a gun.
He was too slow. The first of the creatures struck him, and the gun flew from his hand. Erics was a large and phenomenally strong man; the thing threw him backward into the open door of the car like a small child. It clambered in after him. The second creature followed. Grace couldn’t see through the tinted windows, but she knew what was happening all the same. For a moment Erics’s flailing legs stuck out the car door, then they were drawn inside. The car rocked violently.
Grace felt sour vomit rise in her throat. The car grew still. The struggle was over; they were feeding.
“The Seekers,” she said. “We’ve got to call the Seekers.”
Travis was already reaching for the phone. He cradled the receiver next to his ear and started to dial. Then, quietly, he put the phone back down.
“It’s dead.”
So, there would be no calling the Seekers. And the radios were short-range only, designed to reach the receivers in Stewart’s and Erics’s cars. They were on their own.
But who had cut the phone lines to the hotel? The creatures out there seemed clever, yes, but in a hungry, animal sort of way. Were they intelligent enough to know the threat of phones, to open a metal box, to pull the right wires? Somehow she doubted it.
“I think they have help,” she said. “I think whoever sent them is here as well.”
Travis nodded. “Maybe they—”
Both ceased motion, speech. It was faint but audible: the slap of long, naked feet against cement. The sound stopped. Then came a low whuffling. It was outside their door.
The curtain. It was parted an inch, and the lamp on the nightstand was on. Grace wanted to reach for the curtain, to jerk it shut, but Travis held her with frightened eyes. The whuffling grew louder. There was a wet snort—
—then the footpads again, moving away, until at last they were gone.
Grace forced her lungs to expel air. It didn’t know which room they were hiding in.
“We have to get out of here,” Travis said. “It’s only a matter of time until they figure out which room we’re in.”
Grace wanted to disagree but couldn’t. Whatever those things were, they would keep searching until they found what they had come for. She pictured the way the creatures had dragged Erics into the car. A door would pose no barrier to them. But out there, she and Travis would be exposed. In the dark, their human eyes would be no match for the large, pale orbs of the creatures.
Travis swore. “I just wish we knew how many of them are out there.”
But there was a way. Before she could lose what remained of her nerve, Grace shut her eyes. She tensed, then reached out with the Touch.
Instantly it was there: the shadow. Memories clawed at her, demanding that she relive them again