And now he was staring at her silently, and she knew what was coming. There was no time left before he took from her what she was chasing.
“I’m going to find you,” she vowed. “I don’t care what I have to do—”
The man frowned, and then he jerked forward and put both of his hands up to his throat, his mouth dropping open. As his face reddened and he gagged, Erika reached for him.
No, no, this wasn’t right, she thought. This was not how the dream went.
“What’s wrong—”
His retching became so violent that his head jerked back and forth, and then he bent over at his hips, throwing out one of his hands blindly.
Just as she was about to grab hold of his arm to help steady him, his eyes locked on her. “Run! Ruuuuuuuuuuun—she’s going to get you—”
His words cut off as his voice strangled into a clicking, like he was trying to speak but there was no air in his lungs or what air there was couldn’t get through a constriction. And then something… came out of him.
It was like a curl of black smoke, but it was more than that. A chill shot down Erika’s spine and she felt an instant revulsion, as if she were confronted by something festering, something… rotten.
Something evil—
* * *
Erika came awake on a scream, the horror-movie sound effect reverberating around the empty walls of her bedroom. To keep herself from waking up the other half of her townhouse—hell, the whole city—she clapped a palm over her mouth. Then she threw off the covers and sat up on her knees. Even though there was nothing in front of her, she reached forward into the thin air with her free hand.
As if she could touch the man—
A sudden sharp pain in her head made her squeeze her eyes shut, but she fought the discomfort. If she could just stay with the memory a little longer, she was so close… so close to seeing…
Seeing what? She knew she had dreamed of the triplex at the Commodore again, of going down to that first floor where the books were. She had no other details, though—other than a yearning to return to where she’d been in her mind, a striking conviction that someone who was in deadly trouble needed her help, that she had to defend and protect somebody from—
Evil.
As her head pounded to the beat of her heart, her eyes went to the glow from her open bathroom door. A persistent disorientation made her question her location, even as she got a good look at her sink and her toothbrush and the Post-it note on her mirror that read “Dental Floss” in her messy handwriting—
The sound was subtle, but in the dim silence, she caught it even over the roar in her ears. Holding her breath, she listened.
There it was again. A creak.
Outside her room on the stairs.
Snapping her hand to her bedside table, she whipped open the drawer and grabbed her nine millimeter. On her feet, she took the safety off and led with the muzzle. Her bare feet made no sound over the wall-to-wall carpeting as she toe-heel’d to the closed door. Back-flatting by the jamb, she held her breath for a second time—
Creeeeak.
No pets. No boyfriend. No family outside of the cemetery.
No keys hidden on her stoop in a flower pot, and her partner, Trey, would have called first before letting himself in.
No alarm going off, and she’d set it as soon as she’d come in like she always did.
Since joining homicide, she’d helped put all kinds of drug dealers, mobsters, and sociopathic monsters behind bars. But she’d never been afraid. She’d already lived through a home invasion where everyone was supposed to die. She’d never worried about a second.
Until… now.
Something was wrong in the townhouse. Something was… very wrong inside—
Someone, she corrected. There was no reason to get all metaphysical about this.
Still, the overhang of that disturbing dream was making her paranoid, her mind skipping around subjects that didn’t bear thinking about. Not in the real world at least.
“I am armed,” she said in a loud voice. “And I have called for backup.”
Creeeeeeaaaaaak.
Prepared to defend herself, she watched as her left hand gripped the doorknob—and abruptly she wondered what the hell she was doing. She hadn’t called anyone for backup, and there was a window by her bed that opened out to the garage roof. She should leave that way, drop down onto the lawn, and go to her neighbor across the street who was a fireman. If the person inside her townhouse had managed to get past her alarm, they were a professional hired to kill her and they were not going to want to run the risk of getting the attention of people who lived on the street.
So why would she risk confronting the intruder alone, even if she had a gun?