Blood Red

She turned and saw him as he dropped from the air like an angel on wings. His hair streamed around his sweet face, a red-blond halo illuminated by the dwindling taillights of the car.

How did he learn to fly?

The car left the road, thudding and bumping its way across the ground and coming to rest against a thick oak tree with an audible crunch.

Teddy dropped into his mother’s arms and she cried out in an ecstasy of joy. His skin was so cold in the fog, so damp, that she had a brief horrifying notion that she was touching a corpse. But dead children couldn’t move, couldn’t smile with such beauty as you pulled them closer. He smelled the way a little angel should smell: of the sea breeze and the sand.

“Mommy!” God, just hearing him, touching him was all she ever needed to be complete. She realized that now, after she had almost lost him. She’d given up, had even thought—

“Oh my God, Teddy,” her voice, usually so calm and in command, broke and she let it, the tears falling freely from her eyes as she hugged him fiercely. “Oh my baby, I thought you were dead! I thought I’d never see you again,” she cried, pressing her hot face against his shoulder and neck and braying out her joy without any inhibitions.

His delicate little hands moved into her hair and he whispered sweetly into her ear, “Mommy, I missed you.”

“Don’t you ever leave me again, baby. Don’t you dare ever run away again.”

“I won’t, Mommy. We’ll be together forever. You and me and Daddy.”

“Your father?” The cold came back, the void opened again beneath her as she struggled with the words that would make him hurt less when he heard them. Bill was dead; he had to be dead, because his shoe was left behind.

“Daddy will be with us. Here he comes now.” Teddy’s voice sounded wrong, teasing, like when he waited for her to open his present to her at Christmas. It was both a wonderful sound and an oddly chilling one.

“Honey, about your daddy . . .”

“What about me?” Bill’s voice was in her ear, directly behind her, but she’d never heard him approach and never felt his breath touch her skin. Cold, hard hands slipped across her shoulders, massaging her flesh. She shivered at the touch and tried to turn her face to see if it really was Bill she felt. He pressed his body against her, his hands gripping harder than before, and she felt his excitement as he pushed still harder against her, pinning her in place.

“Bill? What the hell . . . where have you been?” She tried to stay calm, but her voice was shaken, her heart trying to find a rhythm it was comfortable with.

“I had to find Teddy, didn’t I?” His lips were against her ear, a soft cold whisper of flesh against flesh. Bill had always loved to nibble her ears during foreplay. The thought chilled her as much as the feel of his cold flesh pressing to her. “We have to be a family again, Michelle. We have to be together.”

Teddy’s hands were still in her hair and they clenched suddenly, hard powerful little grips that pulled her face up until she could look at him. See him for the first time. In the near darkness, his eyes were aglow, lit by fires the color of winter moonlight. His skin was sallow, pasty white. His teeth were bared in a smile that had nothing to do with joy or love or compassion. And then he leaned down as fast as a striking cobra and his teeth were biting, tearing into her flesh.

Michelle screamed, with the sudden and unbearable pain that was second only to the understanding that this was not her son. Teddy bit deeper, his cold face pressed to her neck and his tongue digging at the incisions he made, penetrating and tasting her life.

Bill bit her too, his mouth on the other side of her throat. The pain was worse by far, as his teeth punctured her skin, her muscles. His hands slid down and cupped her breasts in a sick mockery of the love they’d known, no matter how cold and distant it had become.

Michelle struggled. She fought and she pushed and she screamed loudly enough to hear her voice echo off the nearby trees. The darkness was almost complete, and even her car was too distant to bring a hope that someone would come and stop the insanity. Michelle cried and begged her family to leave her in peace.

That was not an option for her husband and child. They wanted what they always wanted: to be a family again.

One big, happy family.

Chapter 13

I

Some days it didn’t pay to get out of bed. Truer words had never been spoken. It was just after midnight when Brian Freemont found the silver Mercedes parked against a tree. The engine was dead, but the hood was still warm. He called it in immediately.

The car belonged to Michelle Aarons Lister. There was no sign of her, but he could see the car keys were still in the ignition. He thought about going to look for her, to see if she had crawled away or been dragged, but after the verbal ass-fucking Captain O’Neill had given him earlier, he decided to follow procedure and wait.