Generation 18 (Spook Squad 2)

The kite disappeared around the corner of the opposite street. She ran across the road and then edged forward, keeping to the shadows of the three-story apartment building.

“Fine.” It only made sense. “I’ll keep in contact.”

“You’d better,” he growled.

She grinned. She might well pay for it later, but damn, it felt good to annoy him.

She reached the corner, but the kite was nowhere to be seen. Wondering how the creature could have moved so fast, she frowned and glanced up—and found it. The loose skin around its arms flapped lightly as it climbed crablike up the wall.

The wind tugged at her hair, throwing it across her eyes. She brushed it back and listened to the sounds beneath the soft cry of the wind. Two men were talking, their voices harsh and grating. A radio near the top of the building played classic rock. Between the two came the squeak of a bed and a whispered good night. These were all sounds she wouldn’t normally have heard but now did thanks to the odd sense of power flowing through the night.

The creature seemed to be headed for the apartment in which the radio played. She watched it for as long as she dared. When it stopped and pressed a taloned hand against a window, she turned and ran for the building’s front door.

“Gabriel, the kite’s about to break into a top-floor apartment on the corner of Gibb and Macelan streets.”

“Help’s on the way. Stay where you are.”

The words had barely whispered into her ear when she heard the sound of glass shattering. A heartbeat later the screaming began. Sickening visions swam through her mind—bloodied images of the street bum she’d found three months ago, his body a mass of raw, weeping muscle stripped of skin.

She swallowed heavily and pounded up the stairs. “Negative. It’s attacking. I’m in pursuit.”

“Damn it, you’re not equipped to deal—”

“Just get backup here quickly.” She pressed the earphone, cutting him off again. She didn’t need to hear what she could and couldn’t do. Not when a man’s life was at stake.

Two flights…three. She leapt over the banister and up the remaining stairs. People milled in their doorways, their eyes wide and fearful. Not one of them appeared willing to investigate what was happening to their neighbor. City living, she thought, sucked. But then, would neighbors in suburban areas be any more willing to risk investigating screams as horrifying as the ones currently shattering the silence? She suspected not.

She slithered to a stop outside the apartment door and glanced back at the pajama-clad crowd. “SIU, folks. Go back inside and lock your doors.”

The crowd melted away. With her laser held at the ready, she stepped back and kicked the door. Wood shuddered, splintering. She booted it a second time and the door flung open, crashing back on its hinges.

The kite was in the middle of the living room, its sheetlike form covering all but the stranger’s slippers. His screams suddenly choked off, and all she heard was an odd sucking noise. Blood seeped past the flaccid, winglike sections of the creature’s arms, forming pools that seemed to glisten black in the darkness.

She raised the stun rifle and fired at the creature. The blue-white energy bit through the darkness, flaring against the kite’s leather-like skin. If it had any effect, she couldn’t see it.

She switched her aim to the creature’s oddly shaped head and fired again. The kite snarled and looked up. It had no mouth, she saw suddenly. It was sucking the stranger’s flesh and blood in through pores on its skin.

She shuddered and fired again, this time at its eyes. The creature snarled again, the sound high-pitched and almost batlike. Then it shook its head and jerked upright. Bloodied strips of half-consumed flesh slid down its body and puddled at its feet. Her stomach churned, but she held her ground and kept on firing at the creature’s eyes. It obviously wasn’t stunning the kite, but it was doing something, because the kite’s movements were becoming increasingly agitated.

It screamed again, then turned and stumbled toward the window. She edged into the apartment. The kite smacked into the wall, then flung out an arm, feeling for the window frame. It was almost as if it had lost all sonar capabilities. So maybe the weapon had addled its keen senses.

It grasped the window frame, felt for the other side to position itself, then dived through the shattered glass. Sam ran over to the window and leaned out. The kite was floating back to the street, its arms out wide, loose skin stretched taut to catch the light breeze. She pressed the earphone again.

“Gabriel, the kite is now on Macelan Street, heading west.”

“Do not go after it. I repeat, do not go after it. Stay in the apartment.”

Her smile was grim. If the tone of his voice was anything to go by, he was madder than hell. He had a right to be, she supposed, but what else could she have done? Let the kite devour the stranger?

Not that her intervention had saved him. She turned away from the window and dug out the marble-sized crime-scene monitor—the latest gadget from the SIU labs. She hit the activate button, then tossed the CSM into the air. It hovered for several seconds, then the light flickered from red to green, indicating it was now recording. She ordered it to do a sweep of the premises for record purposes. The monitor obeyed, panning around the room, taking in the doorway she’d kicked open, the window and the body. Then it returned, hovering several feet away from her.

“The kite smashed through the living room window and attacked the victim at three fifteen a.m. I—SIU Officer Ryan—intervened and drove the kite back through the window.” She showed the monitor her badge, then walked across the room to squat beside the body. “The victim is male, probably mid-sixties.”

The CSM dropped closer to the body, capturing the bloody details of the murder. What remained of the victim’s flesh hung in strips, almost indistinguishable from the remnants of his red-and-white-striped pajamas. His eyes were wide, his mouth locked into a scream—a look of astonished horror that was now permanently etched into his features.

Why this man? Why not the two men talking in the apartment below, or the woman who’d just joined her partner in bed? She glanced up and studied the room.

The kite had come straight to this apartment, so it had obviously wanted this man specifically. What they now had to find out was why.