When Darkness Falls(50)

Devon stared at the stripped bed, breathing the guestroom’s blood and death scents again. Not only did he not feel repulsed, he felt hungry. He stumbled out of the room, revolted by his reaction. From outside came the sound of Lydia’s car starting and pulling away.

Devon’s mind began to shut down, section by section, like a hallway full of doors closing one at a time. He could not think about Haley, about Lydia, about what had brought him here, about what he would do next. Fatigue weighed down his muscles.

But he couldn’t sleep, or he might dream. He couldn’t remember why he shouldn’t. He simply knew he could not, would not, allow himself to. He moved toward the kitchen.

He drank an entire carton of orange juice, standing in the light from the open refrigerator. He took out lemons and oranges and tangerines and sat at the table and ate, peels and all. He barely noticed the bitter taste. He felt as if he’d never be full again.

At some point he remembered he needed a taxi, and that the reason he needed the taxi was that he was leaving Lydia’s, so he found his bag and made sure he packed everything he’d brought with him. After he called the cab company, he resumed eating. His phone app told him it would be less than fifteen minutes.

When he heard a car approach, he jumped to his feet, knocking the pile of yellow, orange, and green peels across the table. He sat again when he realized it was Lydia’s car.

She breezed into the kitchen.

“You look pale.” She noticed his travel bag. “Where are you going?”

Devon grabbed his bag, avoiding her eyes. Avoiding her. To glance at her felt dangerous. He opted to leave by the back door rather than brush past her to get to the front.

“You’ll be back,” Lydia said. “You’ll see. You need me.”

Devon let the door slam on her voice.

? ? ?

Lydia flung open the bedroom closet and yanked Eric’s clothes off the hangers. Silk shirts, silk ties, designer suits. She stuffed the clothes into garbage bags and filled the last one with shoes.

After dumping the bags into her trunk to dispose of later, she returned to the kitchen. She threw the leftover lemons into the refrigerator, crushed the orange juice carton, and cleaned the table. Finally, she stopped her frantic movement, closed her eyes, let out a deep breath. This wasn’t over.

She called Devon’s cell phone and felt no surprise when it went to voicemail.

“Devon, I didn’t mean to scream after you. I was upset. I want to help you. I didn’t do a good job explaining things. Please call me. Let me try again. You don’t need to come back here. I want to make sure you understand things. Understand what could happen. Call me. ‘Bye.”

? ? ?

Two small windows near the bed overlooked the parking area. Devon opened the heavy orange curtains and stared out. There wasn’t much to do in an empty motel room at night except sleep. He was tempted to lie down, but so long as he was awake, he had some control. Some.

The moment when Lydia snapped Eric’s neck with one hand played through his mind. His father had once told him that if you needed to kill a man, you should slam the base of your hand against the front of his nose. That would send shards of cartilage into his brain, which would kill him. Devon didn’t know if it was true. He didn’t know why he thought of it now, except it was an easy way to kill someone, if it worked, a way that didn’t require a lot of strength.

Snapping someone’s neck would require a lot of strength no matter how you did it.

Beyond human. The knife and the blood and stabbing Devon might all have been nothing but tricks. Farfetched as that seemed, it was exponentially more realistic than Lydia’s explanation. But Eric’s head bent sideways on his neck, and his dead body carried out in a sack over Lydia’s shoulder, were not tricks.

Devon pressed his hands against the windowpane and peered out. The hotel room was hot. The night looked cool. He lifted the window, felt the breeze. His insides ached.

He was hungry. He hadn’t eaten anything but the fruit at Lydia’s since he’d arrived a day and a half ago. He needed to eat. He would get food. That would fill the time until the sun rose.

The motel had no room service. No restaurant. He searched on his phone and found a grocery store about a mile away. Walking would kill time and save him taxi money.

Devon stepped out of the room and into the night. His muscles tightened, and adrenalin shot through his limbs.





Chapter Twenty-Five


Devon knew the color, make, and model of each car that drove by and how many people were in it. Wind howled in his ears, yet he heard the rustling sounds of people turning over in their beds inside the apartments he walked past, and the crunch of a stray dry leaf beneath his boot. The electric hum when the traffic light changed from green to red buzzed in his ears. It should have made everything too loud, should have been too much input, but he could identify each separate noise, and listen to it or not as he chose.

Moving took almost no effort, as if he were skimming an inch above the sidewalk. He wanted to run, but something warned him he should not. He thought of Haley and wished he could tell her about this. Later, would he be able to find the words? Probably not. It would seem like it had been his imagination. Right now, he knew it was real.

More than human. Maybe this heightened awareness was what Lydia had meant. One of the things she’d meant. He refused to contemplate the others.