She had to do something; she knew that if she remained here much longer, the shadow creatures would shatter the Civic’s windows, rush into the car like a flood of darkness, and finish her off. She had no way to fight them, though. She didn’t know whether physical weapons like knives or guns would have any effect on them, but since she had neither, it scarcely mattered. She didn’t have any tools in her car that could be used as weapons, either. No crowbar, not even a goddamned hammer or screwdriver. And she certainly wasn’t capable of fighting them hand to hand. She was fit, but she had no combat training of any kind, and even if she had, there were simply too many of the damn things for one person to deal with, no matter how skilled at fighting he or she was. She couldn’t defend herself, and in only a matter of moments….

She realized then that she’d been wrong. She did possess one weapon, and if she wanted to survive this attack, she needed to use it – now.

She put her foot on the brake and stabbed her finger toward the ignition switch. The Civic’s engine turned over, and she put the car in drive. She removed her foot from the brake, put it down on the accelerator, and the vehicle leaped forward. She couldn’t see the access road clearly because of the shadow creatures crouched on her hood and roof, their clawed hands pounding on the windshield. She gripped the steering wheel tightly and did her best to maneuver through the cemetery without hitting any headstones or trees. Her path was erratic and weaving, and she couldn’t go fast enough to dislodge the shadow creatures that clung to her car. She’d left the others behind, but a quick glance at the rearview showed they were running after her, and as slow as she was moving, she knew they’d catch up to her soon. Some escape this was turning out to be.

Fuck it.

She angled her Civic off the path and pointed it toward the brick wall that enclosed the cemetery. She had a relatively unobstructed route to the wall, and she jammed the accelerator to the floor. The car began to gain speed as it moved forward, and she yanked the steering wheel to the right and left as she went, doing her best to avoid the few headstones in her way. She clipped one with the edge of her front bumper, but the impact wasn’t enough to slow her down significantly. She mentally apologized to whoever lay buried beneath the headstone she’d damaged, and then forgot about it as she continued to accelerate toward the wall.

The shadow things hanging on to her car showed no indication that they were alarmed by what she was doing, and they continued pounding at the Civic’s windshield and side windows. Cracks were beginning to appear in the glass, and Lori knew she had only seconds left before the creatures broke through.

The pale orange-brick face of the wall grew larger in her vision, seeming to almost shimmer, as if she was viewing it through tears. She realized then what a ridiculous plan this was, if it could even be called a plan. She’d started driving toward the wall out of instinct, hoping to scare off the shadow creatures, or if they wouldn’t scare, to injure them when the car crashed into the wall. But either the things weren’t intelligent enough to know what she was doing, or they didn’t care. Maybe the impact wouldn’t harm them, or maybe they didn’t fear injury. Maybe they possessed no drive for self-preservation, only a need to attack and kill. Even if the shadow creatures were as vulnerable as humans – which she doubted – she couldn’t possibly build up enough speed to do them any real harm when she crashed. The most likely outcome of her grand attempt to flee was that she’d hit the wall, the vehicle’s airbags would go off, and she’d be momentarily stunned, giving the shadow creatures the few last moments they would need to smash through the car windows and get their clawed hands on her.

But her sense of self-preservation was highly developed, and as the wall loomed close, she was unable to stop herself from stomping on the brake. She gripped the steering wheel even tighter, closed her eyes, and waited for the collision to happen.

Chapter Seven

And waited.

And waited.

The Civic came to a stop, but it felt as if the car had continued moving longer than should’ve been possible given her proximity to the wall. Keeping her foot on the brake, she opened her eyes. She registered darkness first, and she felt a rush of panic, believing that so many of the shadow creatures now clung to her car that they completely covered the windows. But then the Civic’s automatic headlights came on and they cut through the darkness, illuminating a glossy-smooth length of road. She saw no other light outside – no streetlights, no building lights, not even any stars.

She had a sudden sick feeling she knew where she was.

Pain hit her then, fiery lines of agony that covered her flesh, which made her skin burn. She glanced down at herself, and by the dashboard lights she saw she was naked, her body covered with cuts, welts, and bruises – just as she’d been the last time she was here. Blood flowed freely from the worst of the wounds, but none of them appeared life threatening, and she decided to ignore them for the time being. Her wrists and ankles hurt, and the skin was red and swollen. From the manacles, she thought.

Somehow, she had found her own entry to the Nightway, and this time she’d brought her car with her. However, it appeared none of the shadow creatures had managed to accompany her. None were visible in the headlight beams, and none clung to the car, pounding their clawed hands on the windows. The silence was as eerie as it was welcome, though. All she could hear now was the sound of the Civic’s idling engine combined with the frantic beating of her heart and the rapid in-out, in-out of her breathing. Then again, maybe the shadow things had transitioned to this starless void with her, only they’d moved away from the car, taking refuge in the dark where they would be perfectly camouflaged, shadows lost in shadow. Maybe they were even now watching her from their concealment, waiting for her to be foolish enough to think herself safe. They’d wait for her to open her door and get out of the car. Maybe she’d do so to check the damage that the Civic had sustained during her improvised escape. Or maybe she’d step out of the car to assure herself that this place was real, that she wasn’t merely imagining it. Whatever the reason, once she opened the door, they would attack, finally getting their opportunity to sink their claws into her flesh and tear her to pieces. But it didn’t feel like they were out there. It felt as if she were entirely alone in this desolate darkness.

Only one way to find out.

She lowered the driver’s-side window the merest crack. Cold air filtered into the car, along with a strange odor, almost metallic, like the smell of ozone that lingers after a lightning strike. No shadow creatures rushed toward her car, no curving ebon claws slid through the opening between the upper frame of the door and the slightly lowered window. Encouraged, she lowered the window down to the halfway point, and just as before, no attack came. It looked like she had left the creatures in the real world, and she wondered what had happened to them when the Civic had vanished. Had momentum carried them forward into the wall? She hoped so, and when they hit, she hoped it had hurt like hell.

She began to shiver in the cold air filtering into the Civic’s interior, so she raised the window all the way up and turned on the heater. The car’s engine had been running long enough to produce warm air immediately, but the change in temperature provided only partial comfort. Her wounds still throbbed, and she was getting blood all over the seat. She obviously possessed the same body as she had the other times she’d been in this reality, and she wondered what had happened in the Vermilion Tower when she’d appeared on the Nightway in her car. Had this version of her disappeared from the tower, leaving the Cabal to stare at an empty X-cross and wonder what had just happened? Or had the two versions of her merged? Whichever the case, she liked the idea of those red-robed fuckers standing around and scratching their asses as they tried to understand how she’d Houdini-ed herself away from them.

She didn’t know what to do now. Could she return home by closing her eyes once more and willing herself there? If she did, would she and her Civic appear in the same place relative to where they’d been when they’d left? Probably outside the cemetery wall, and likely in the street. If so, the shadow things would still be close by, and she had no doubt they’d scent her somehow and come after her again. They might even be able to find their own entrance to the Nightway and continue their pursuit of her. There was no way to know what the goddamned things were capable of.

Speaking of pursuit, would the Driver get in his big black car and start racing up and down the Nightway in search of her? Possibly. Probably.

Certainly.

Regardless of whether the shadow creatures, the Driver, or both came after her, it wouldn’t be wise to stay here. Best to get moving, even if she didn’t have a destination in mind. After she’d gone several miles, she could try to transition back to the real world again. With luck, she’d reappear far enough from the cemetery to throw off the shadow creatures, at least for a while. She took her bare foot off the brake and pressed it to the accelerator. She started slow at first. There were no painted lines to mark the road’s edges, and it was difficult to tell where the Nightway ended and whatever lay beyond it – obsidian-colored soil or pitch-black rock – began. As she drove, she wondered if she’d slipped all the way into full-blown madness, and if so, she wondered if she cared.

Humming to herself and not thinking about Aashrita, why she’d visited her friend’s grave, or what she’d hoped to accomplish there, she pushed the accelerator down farther and the Civic began to pick up speed.

* * *

The Shadowkin mill about the cemetery, searching for Lori, sniffing for her trail like dogs that have lost the scent of their prey. They do not possess the capacity for rational thought, not in the way humans understand it, and are thus incapable of reasoning out where Lori has gone. All they know is that she was here and they almost had her, and now she is not here.

Each time the Shadowkin are near Lori, they feed on her energy, growing stronger, more real. But even with their increased abilities, they cannot now sense her presence. Without her, they have no focus, no purpose. They are lost, and this frightens and angers them. Without Lori to hold them together, the Shadowkin begin to drift apart, leaving the cemetery one by one, moving out into the town in search of other food, and just as importantly, something to vent their anger upon.

Something to hurt.

Something to kill.

* * *

It was an old joke that mail carriers get invited into the residences of horny customers on their routes to deliver quite a bit more than bills and sales flyers. Wife doesn’t answer her phone when you call during your lunch hour? Your baby doesn’t look like you? Blame the mailman.

Norman Palmer was well aware of this cliché when he took a job with the postal service as a carrier, and other, more seasoned employees teased him about all the ass he’d get on the job. Not just the male carriers. The women joked about it, too. Norman had figured they were all just razzing the new guy, and he didn’t expect more out of his job than doing a lot of walking while his mind wandered. Norman dreamed of being a professional cartoonist, and he figured he could work on ideas for cartoons in his head while he walked, and then draw them later. A steady paycheck, regular exercise, and time to think about cartoons seemed more than enough to expect from his job.

But it turned out that the stories were true. He did get a lot of ass.

Not every day, but a couple times a week, sometimes more. Bored housewives whose husbands were at work and whose kids were at school would open the door when he stepped onto their porch to put their mail into the box. Sometimes they’d be dressed in tight T-shirts and shorts or maybe low-cut tops that displayed their cleavage. Maybe they’d be wearing a T-shirt and panties or sexy lingerie or nothing at all. They would ask him how he was doing, how his day was going, invite him in for a cool drink when the weather was warm, a hot drink when it was cold. And when he accepted their offer and went inside, they gave him a hell of a lot more than liquid refreshment.

He was young – only twenty-five – tall and broad-shouldered. He had a man’s body and a boy’s face, and a lot of women found the combination irresistible. It didn’t hurt that he had a larger than average cock, either. He didn’t know for sure, but he suspected the women on his route told their friends – their best friends, the ones they could trust – about what he had to offer. Word of mouth is the best kind of advertising.

As far as Norman was concerned, he was living his absolutely best life. He didn’t know how long it would last, though. Husbands might become suspicious and the women would decide not to put their marriages at risk anymore. And one day he wouldn’t look so boyish, and then he might not receive as many invitations to come inside – might not receive any. But until then, he was going to enjoy every minute he spent with other men’s wives. When he’d turned fifteen, his dad had given him some advice. Fuck as many women as you can as often as you can. Because once you get married, you’ll be lucky to get laid once a month, if that. Norman had taken his father’s advice to heart, and he intended to have as much sex as he could while he could.

This rainy afternoon he was in bed with Camille Barnes. She was almost twice his age and carried a few extra pounds, but she had large breasts and she fucked like a teenager. She was one of those older women who tried to appear younger by dyeing their hair in colors favored by millennials – in Camille’s case, a bright blue – and getting tattoos and piercings. Camille wore a nose stud, and she had an elaborate tattoo of a phoenix on her back, red flames trailing from its wings, eyes blazing with inner fire. Whenever he fucked her from behind, as he was doing now, he couldn’t escape the feeling that the phoenix was glaring at him, demanding he plow the bird’s mistress harder, faster, deeper. For this reason, he often kept his eyes shut while screwing Camille in this position, or sometimes he’d let his gaze wander around the room – anything so long as he didn’t have to look at that damn bird.

Camille was on her hands and knees, pushing herself back against him as he thrust himself into her, her large breasts making slapping sounds against her chest as they flopped back and forth. She had her head down as if she was concentrating, and she kept up a running monologue while they fucked.

“Yeah, that’s right, that’s good, keep it up, keep going, don’t stop, get in there, fill me up, fuck me harder, that’s good, right there….”

He supposed a lot of guys might be turned on listening to a woman responding like this while they were screwing, but he found it kind of distracting, to be honest. It was like she was trying too hard to have a good time instead of just having it. But each to their own, right?

The first time a woman brought him into her marital bed, he thought he’d feel self-conscious at best and like an absolute piece of shit at worst. But it turned out he hadn’t felt much of anything. In fact, the idea that he was fucking another man’s woman on the same bed that the two of them had sex on was kind of kinky. Besides, most of the bedrooms he was invited into had been decorated by the women, so they felt more like the wives’ spaces than the husbands’. Camille’s bedroom was done in variations of blue. Everything – the walls, the curtains, the carpet, the bedclothes – was different shades of blue. The air smelled blue too, like she was using some kind of air freshener or something. The décor was a little much for him, but he wasn’t here to admire Camille’s aesthetic taste. He was here to fuck this woman until she screamed.

Camille had opened the bedroom window several inches, high enough so they could hear the rain – she loved the sound of falling rain – but not so far that water got inside. It wasn’t raining so hard that the sound would mask Camille’s X-rated monologue and her cries and shouts as she approached orgasm. But if she didn’t care if her neighbors heard them fucking, why should he?

His postal uniform – along with his underwear and socks – lay on the floor where Camille had dropped them after undressing him. She’d met him at the door wearing only a skimpy black bra and panties, and they lay next to his uniform. Camille had removed them seconds after she’d gotten him naked. His carrier bag stuffed with mail sat propped up against the wall near the clothes. Whenever he was invited into a woman’s bedroom, he always brought his bag and put it where he could keep an eye on it. He was a professional, after all.

Camille wanted to switch positions, and a moment later, she lay on her back, legs up in the air and spread wide, mashing her left breast with one hand and furiously working her clit with the other while he continued drilling her. Both of them were slick with sweat, and Norman was wondering if she would squirt when she came today. Sometimes she did, sometimes she didn’t.

He was so absorbed in his work that he didn’t notice a tendril of darkness slide through the tiny spaces in one of the window screens, pushing its way silently between the curtains, and begin slithering into the room. The Shadowkin arced downward toward the floor, moved across the carpet, then stretched upward along the side of the bed. The tip of its tendril reached to the top of the bed near Camille’s left shoulder, and then, swift as a striking cobra, it lunged toward her mouth. She’d been in the process of her sexual monologue – words coming faster, voice pitched higher, breathing more rapid as she got closer to climax – so her mouth was open when the Shadowkin’s tendril came at her, and it jammed itself past her teeth, over her tongue, and down her throat. Her eyes went wide with surprise, and she tried to scream, but the Shadowkin’s thick, dark substance filled her throat, preventing her from making any sound or, for that matter, taking in air. The Shadowkin continued flowing into her, doing so rapidly, and by the time Norman was aware there was some kind of weird-looking snake-like thing crawling down Camille’s throat, the last of the Shadowkin’s substance had come through the window screen, shot toward Camille, and vanished into her.

Her eyes rolled back in her head and she removed her hands from her breast and clitoris and grabbed Norman’s wrists. His hands were palm down on the mattress, supporting him while he’d been fucking Camille, only now he wanted nothing more than to pull out of her and throw himself backward off the bed in order to get away from her and the thing inside her. But her hands tightened around his in twin death grips, and he couldn’t free himself. The woman might’ve been twice his age, but damn, she was strong!

He watched in horror as bulges appeared on her upper and lower abdomen, and he realized the black stuff – whatever the hell it was – was racing through her, down her alimentary canal, into her stomach, then her intestines, and from there—

Her body arched against him, her muscles tightened, and she threw her head back. The tail end of the Shadowkin had penetrated deeply enough inside her that she was able to breathe again, and she used that breath to scream. It struck Norman that she was caught in the throes of pain so intense that it seemed like a grotesque parody of an orgasm. Something was happening inside her – something bad. He still couldn’t pull free from her grip, felt her fingernails cutting into the flesh of his wrists, but his cock – still inside her – began to deflate. Then he felt something tickle the opening of his penis, almost as if a finger was poking him from inside her.

Good Christ. The tentacle-thing had burst through her intestines, into her uterus, and had slid down her vaginal canal, where it was now fondling him.

“No!” he shouted. “No, no, no!”

He gritted his teeth, put everything he had into yanking his arms free of Camille’s hands, but she continued holding him fast, her grip like iron.