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"Interesting ti the sa were they here?" Curran asked

"A few hours" Derek pointed to a narrow spot between the side of the house and a wooden fence "They hid there, behind the trash cans"

Three ghouls just sitting there waiting while the residents of the house left for work Don’there, behind your trash cans, rubbing our big sharp clahile your delicious children leave for school And that wasn’t creepy No, not at all

"Why?" I thought out loud "If they were hiding, there are better places to hide"

"M "Bad place to hide but a good place for an alanced back at Mrs Oswald’s house A couple of houses down, the street ended in a cul-de-sac Only one way in or out

"Any other scents?" I asked "Any human scents? Anyone they attacked?"

Derek shook his head

Curran looked atabout this seems odd to me Ghouls are solitary They live near cemeteries, they hide in burrows, and they travel at dawn or during the night They don’t band into groups and prance about in broad daylight in a residential neighborhood Unless the owner of that house is a serial killer and he’s got his victims buried in his backyard, there is no reason for them to be here"

"There are no bodies in the backyard," Derek said "I would’ve smelled decohly unlikely that these two odd things"--I pointed at the trash cans with one hand and at the corpse of the spider-scorpion with the other--"aren’t connected I think they aiting for Eduardo" And I would give a year of houls we killed in Lawrenceville were answering so for them They don’ttheanization and unusual behavior," Derek said

"Can you track theo ask theet the car," I said I would only slow them down on foot

Fifteen minutes later I chased them in a Jeep I’d have to send soe’s car

Lions weren’t known for theirabilities, but Curran was a werelion and by human standards he was a superb runner He and Derek flen the street at thirtypace

Ghouls came from the Arabic mythos One of the earliest known references to theriffins were rumored to have been native to North Africa and were familiar to Berbers Muslims conquered North Africa around the seventh century BC, so technically there was soriffin and the ghouls And that’s where it all stopped her authority They weren’t undead, they retained their free will, and all attempts to control them by outside forces usually ended badly They were cowardly solitary scavengers or predators of opportunity, who dug deep burrows and hid froht I had no idea how the spider-scorpion thing or the cats fit into it