Page 58 of The Midnight Knock

After a moment, Kyla heard more steps, these muffled by carpet as they came down the room’s back hall.

Kyla’s claustrophobia left her in a hurry. Her heart thundered in her chest, the sound so loud she was certain the man in the room must be able to hear it reverberate in the wood of the armoire.

The carpeted steps came closer. Kyla caught a familiar smell: old stone, old cologne, staleness itself. His steps passed inches from Kyla’s head. In that thoroughly polite twang, he called out, “Miss Hewitt?”

Kyla heard a rustle of fabric as he lifted the skirt of her bed. He opened the door of the armoire above her. Through the narrow crack between the soffit paneling and the floor, she could see slivers of Jack Allen’s shoes, a shiny blackness in the dark.

She didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.

The door of the armoire closed. Jack Allen’s footsteps moved away. They returned to the hall and on to the back door. There was silence, punctuated only by the scratches and hisses of the creatures in the desert.

Kyla let herself exhale. She shifted her weight, struggling to get comfortable in the narrow confines under the armoire, and wondered when she could risk a few moments to come out and stretch her legs.

But then, with a cold stab of panic, she realized there was a sound she hadn’t heard: she hadn’t heard the creak of wood from the back porch. She hadn’t heard any indication that Jack Allen had really left her room.

She also didn’t hear him coming back down the hall, silent as a cat, until he dragged the armoire away from the wall.

Air rushed over her. His stench flooded her nose. Outside, a wave ofSHRIEKSrose from the direction of Ethan’s room.

“Hello, Miss Hewitt,” Jack Allen said. “I don’t think you’ve ever tried hiding here before.”

ETHAN

Outside, Ethan heard one of those creatures rip a metal bar off their window. The metal let out a squeal and a twang, like a mangled engine fan. Another bar came away. Glass shattered. Fabric was shredded as a talon tore into the mattress they’d barricaded over the window. One of the things outside slammed against their front door with a heavy thud. The bolt creaked in the frame.

These barricades weren’t going to hold for long. If the boys were lucky, they might have a few seconds.

Hunter said again, “Run.”

Ethan was already moving. He didn’t have much of a plan, but he knew that staying in this room was a death sentence.

Ethan hadn’t taken two steps down the hall before one of the night creatures heaved itself against the back door. The door’s bolt shattered and swung open, a bloom of sawdust in a shaft of starlight. A massive figure stood on the porch, silhouetted against the night. The creature raised its wings. ItSHRIEKED.

Ethan brought up the revolver in his hand. He fired. In the flash of the muzzle, he caught stray glimpses of the thing in the dark: bright talons, black feathers, black scales.

He saw the shape of the thing’s head. In his gut, he felt another squeeze of that ancient primal terror that had gripped him all night.

But the revolver’s rounds hit home. The creature stumbled backward with a startled wail, a furious hiss. Whatever the hell it was, it wasn’t immune to bullets.

The thing fell off the porch, twitching and prone. Hunter slammed against Ethan’s shoulder, the shotgun still in his hands. “Go!”

Ethan was overclocked with adrenaline. He felt like he could see further, clearer, than a normal man. He could absorb every detail around him. He saw time collapse into a series of frozen, vivid moments:

The porch, empty and cold.

Black clouds, faint reflections of starlight.

The creatures of the desert everywhere: a feathered darkness in the cosmic afterglow.

Ethan was running. Hunter was behind him. They were running up the porch, toward the rear of the motel. Toward the mountain? Not exactly.

They rounded the corner of the porch and there it was: the two-story house at the foot of the mountain, its upstairs window shining with silver light. It was calling to them. Ethan knew, way down deep in his soul, that something in that old house was waiting for him.

Ethan said to Hunter, “It’s our best shot.”

Hunter made a grunt. Whether it was anotheryesor another wad of phlegm, they just kept running.

A creature rounded the corner of the porch, raised its wings.