Page 14 of The Reveal
I’m not sure I like it. The main reason to not have long hair, after all, is because it can be grabbed.
And Samuel thinks I’m an idiot.
Since I’m back to thinking about Samuel, I take that to bed with me. Not the idiot part. I glide over that, daydreaming about the way his hands wrapped around my elbows instead.
Though as I daydream off into sleep, he’s moving closer the way he did that one night, and this time, it isn’t rushed and quiet—
When I jolt awake sometime later, something’s wrong.
My head is pounding. My stomach is in a knot.
She is stirring!a voice that’s a lot creepier than my grandmother’s echoes inside my head. I feel something slick and upsetting move through me, and I think about a ruined face and claws where hands should be, rearing like a dead thing from a grave and lurching toward me—
But whateverthatis, it’s not the issue. Not now. I glance at the clock and see that it’s three in the morning, which is not a time anything mortal and consumable needs to be up and about. It’s feeding time out there.
That’s when I hear the noise again, the one that must have woken me up.
I’m up and moving before I can process what’s happening, strapping on my weapons and taking to the stairs. It’s only when I reach the second floor that I realize what I’m hearing is a pounding sound.
Not any old pounding sound.
Someone is hammering something—maybe a fist, maybe a battering ram, it’s hard to tell—against the front door.
I have my guns in my hands as I go down to the first floor, not bothering to turn on any lights. It’s the middle of the night. People with good intentions don’t go out in the middle of the night, because too many nasty thingsonlygo out then.
I go down to the door, slide open the peephole, and stick the muzzle of my gun through it.
I peer out around it, and I can make out the dimensions of a man.
A very, very,verylarge man.
“If I were you, asshole,” comes a deep, rough growl of a voice, “I would rethink pointing that fucking gun in my face.”
I do rethink. I release the safety and chamber a round.
I see a faint movement in my peripheral vision and risk a glance to see Maddox coming across the yard. Fast. I take a split second to note that she and I are not the same. Because I sleep in my clothes. She apparently sleeps in tiny baby-doll pajamas like she doesn’t have a care in the world what might come busting through her windows or pounding at her door.
Or in this case, my door.
Must be nice,I think, but I turn my attention back to the stranger on my doorstep.
“You have three seconds to get the fuck away from my door,” I tell him. “And two of those seconds are gone.”
“It’s okay,” Maddox calls as she comes up beside the porch. “He’s my ... I knew he was going to show up. It’s fine. He’s not here to hurt anyone.”
“Don’t fucking count on it, you little shit,” comes that deep voice from the other side of the door. But he doesn’t look at her. He’s glaring at my gun.
I stare at Maddox as she comes up on the porch, putting herself well within this man’s reach. She stares back at me, and I swear there is something almost ... beseeching in her gaze. Or maybe it’s the middle of the night and this was the plan all along, to roust me out of bed.
I think of that terrible voice inside me. That ruined face. But I blink it away. And I don’t know why, if there was a slaughter planned, Maddox would roll up to it in those pajamas.
I pull the gun back inside. Maddox smiles gratefully.
I realize I’m holding my breath, because this does not, in fact, feelfine.
And then the huge man on my doorstep steps back. Just enough that I can see him beneath the porch light, and I freeze.
Because I know him, too.
