The Instruments of Darkness: A Thriller

Chapter LXVIII

To the northwest, Sabine Drew lay awake. Through the open drapes of her window, she could see the outline of branches against the starlit sky, like fractures in the cosmos, and hear the flitting of bats on the hunt for night insects. She laid a hand against her breastbone and felt night sweat upon it. She made an effort to sit up, but her body would not respond, and when she tried to breathe, it was as though a hand had been placed over her nose and mouth. She began to panic, flailing against the bedclothes with her legs, even as her arms and torso remained rigid.

Suddenly she was no longer in her own bed, but lying in cold ground. There was dirt on her chest, dirt on her face, dirt in her eyes. The weight of it grew heavier and heavier, the light above slowly being obliterated until there was only darkness and the imminence of death. She was not alone. Henry Clark was nearby. She could hear him crying, could feel him straining toward a consciousness that was both hers and that of another, a man old but strong, still fighting even as the earth bound him to itself.

And a fourth was with them, a near-formless entity: hungry, alien, and yes, lonely. It still held Henry close, but it was also reaching for the man—a stranger, not the detective—reaching for her, because she was one with him in his final moments. She surrendered to its touch, intimate and searching, yet also uncertain. It tightened its grip, and curiosity turned to hostility.

Because it only likes children.

The pressure on her eased. She could move again.

The man was dead.