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She expected the walls to bulge and flow in that ahtmare places, but they res were too sharp and clear for this to be a dreamscape

Frantically she pulled on her socks and shoes, unnerved being barefoot, as earlier her near nakedness had made her feel vulnerable--as if death could be foiled by an adequate wardrobe

She heard those voices again Not at the end of the hallway anyShe wished the door featured one of those one-way, fisheye lenses that allowed a wide-angled view, but there was none

At the sill was a half-inch crack, however, so Tessa dropped to the floor, pressed one side of her face against the carpet, and squinted out at the corridor Fro move past her rooh she caught a glih to alter dra This was not an incidence of huery akin to the bloodbath she had witnessed--and to which she nearly had succumbed--in Northern Ireland This was, instead, an encounter with the unknown, a breach of reality, a sudden sideslip out of the normal world into the uncanny They were leathery, hairy, dark-skinned feet, broad and flat and surprisingly long, with toes so extrusile and multiple jointed that they al hit the door Hard

Tessa scrambled to her feet and out of the foyer

Crazed voices filled the hall that same weird mix of harsh animal sounds punctuated by bursts of breathlessly spoken but for the most part disconnected words

She went around the bed to the , disengaged the pressure latch, and slid the ain the door shook The boom was so loud that Tessa felt as if she were inside a druuests’ door, thanks to the chair, but it would not hold for more than a few additional blows

She sat on the sill, swung her legs out, looked down The fog-dalow of the serviceway lamps about twelve feet below theAn easy juain, harder Wood splintered

Tessa pushed off the sill She landed on the ay and, because of her rubber-soled shoes, skidded but did not fall

Overhead, in the room she had left, wood splintered more noisily than before, and tortured rate

She was near the north end of the building She thought she saw soht have been nothingeastward on the wind, but she didn’t want to take a chance, so she ran south, with the vast black sea beyond the railing at her right side By the tih the night--the sound of the door to her roo of the pack as it entered that place in search of her

35

Sa Danberry’s attention Four cruisers awaited the cop’s use, so there was a seventy-five-percent chance that Sam would be undetected if he stayed in the car He slid down in the driver’s seat as far as he could and leaned to his right, across the computer keyboard on the console

Danberry went to the next car in line

With his head on the console, his neck twisted so he could look up through theon the passenger’s side, Sam watched as Danberry unlocked the door of that other cruiser He prayed that the cop would keep his back turned, because the interior of the car in which Sa-lot lights If Danberry even glanced his way, Saot into the other black-and-white and slaine turned over Danberry pulled out of the ine, and his tires spun and squealed for a h Saain to find out whether Watkins and Shaddack were still conversing, he knew he dared not stay any longer As the manhunt escalated, the police depart were sure to become busy

Because he didn’t want the in their computer or that he had eavesdropped on their VDT conversation--the greater they assunorance to be, the less effective they would be in their search for hinition core in the steering coluot out, pushed the lock button down, and closed the door

He didn’t want to leave the area by the alleyway because a patrol carhiht across that narrow back street froht-iron fence He entered the rear yard of a slightly decrepit Victorian-style house whose owners had let the shrubbery run so wild that it looked as if a ht live in the place He walked quietly past the side of the house, across the front lawn, to Pacific Drive, one block south of Ocean Avenue

The night cal footsteps, no cries of alarm But he knew he had awakened a erous Hydra was looking for him all over town

36

Mike Peyser didn’t knohat to do, didn’t know, he was scared, confused and scared, so he could not think clearly, though he needed to think sharp and clear like a ; his mind worked quickly, and it was sharp, but he could not hold to a single train of thought for , rapid-fire thinking, was not good enough to solve a problem like this; he had to think quick and deep But his attention span was not what it should have been

When he finally was able to stop screaet up fro roo room, down the short hall to the bedroo on all fours part of the way, rising onto his hind feet as he crossed the bedroom threshold, unable to rise all the way up and stand entirely straight, but flexible enough to get more than halfway erect In the bathrooue and solow that penetrated the se of the sink and stared into the mirrored front of the medicine cabinet, where he could see only a shadowy reflection of himself, without detail

He wanted to believe that in fact he had returned to his natural for trapped in the altered state was pure hallucination, yes, yes, he wanted to believe that, badly needed to believe, believe, even though he could not stand fully erect, even though he could feel the difference in his iered hands and in the queer set of his head on his shoulders and in the way his back joined his hips He needed to believe

Turn on the light, he told hiht

He was afraid