Shadow Prey

 . . . .
    The problem was, the first one to turn on a light would be most exposed . . . .
    “I’m not here to hurt anybody,” he called.
     
    His voice was a shock: he was so close. Two feet away, three. And now she could smell him: his breath. He’d been eating something spicy, sausage maybe, and his warm breathtrickled toward her over the carpet. Could he smell the bath oils on her? She thought she might be a yard from the door, and he was coming through. She rolled to one side, a slow, inching, agonizing movement, holding the towel bar between her breasts.
     
    Where was she? Why wasn’t she answering? She could be standing over him, pointing a .45 at his skull, tightening on the trigger. The injustice of his death gripped him, and for a full beat, two beats, he waited for the crashing blow that would kill him. There was nothing. He reached ahead in the dark, feeling the baseboard on the wall ahead, sliding his hand to the right, finding the corner and the doorway. The bathroom . . . that noise she made, that sounded like it came out of a bathroom, the hollow-sharp sound you get from tile walls . . . What was she doing in there? Moving a few inches at a time, he crossed through the doorway, low-crawling toward the bathroom. Nothing from her. Nothing. Maybe she’s not armed . . . .
    “Don’t got no gun, bitch. That’s it. Well, I’m putting my gun away, you know? You know why? ‘Cause I’m getting my knife out. Cut open Larry Hart with it, you know? You know what I did then? After I cut him? You know?”
    Where is she? Where is the bitch? He strained into the darkness. Got to scare her, got to make her move.
    “I sucked the blood, that’s what I did,” Shadow Love called. “All hot. Better’n deer’s blood. Sweeter . . . Bet yours’ll be sweeter yet . . .”
    Where the fuck is she?
     
    There was a change in the darkness next to her, a movement through it. Shadow Love, on the floor next to her, not more than two feet away, low-crawling toward the bathroom. She couldn’t see him, but she could sense him there, moving in the dark. Moving as slowly as he was, she pulled her feet under her and quietly stood up, her hand sliding up the woodwork along the edge of the door. She could no longer sense him—standing, she was quite literally too far away—but she figured he had to be through the door.
    • • •
    “You don’t have a gun, do you, bitch?” Shadow Love screamed. The cry was as hard and sharp as a sliver of glass and Lily gasped involuntarily. He heard the gasp and froze. She was close by. He could feel it. Very close. Where? He swung an arm out to the right, then his gun hand to the left. And he touched her, raked the back of her calf with his gun hand as she went through the door, into the outer room, and he pivoted and fired the pistol once through the door . . . .
     
    No, she thought. He must have heard  . . .
    She took a fast step through the door, high, over him, in case his legs were still in the doorway, and was pushing off with her back leg when his hand struck her calf. Shit. She dodged sideways; there was a flash and a deafening crack, and she twisted sideways toward the television set, crawling . . . .
    “Noooo . . .” The scream clutched at Lily as she hit a body in the dark. Soft . . . woman  . . . She had just registered the thought as the other woman, sobbing frantically, clubbed at her and she went down, twisting, back on her hands and knees, crawling toward the television, reaching out, sweeping the carpet for the purse . . . .
     
    The muzzle blast blinded him for a second, but now he knew for sure: She had no gun and was heading for the door. The maid’s scream froze him, then Shadow Love struggled to his feet, groping for the wall and a light switch. He found the wall and ran his hand toward the switch, watching the doorway in case the cop tried for the door.
    And then, in the instant before he would turn on the light . . .
    He heard the slide.
    There was no other sound like it. A .45, at full cock.
    And then Lily, her voice like a gravedigger’s: “I’m out here, motherfucker. Go ahead—turn on the light.”
    Shadow Love, poised in the doorway, felt the voice coming from his left. One chance: he took it. With the gun in his hand he launched himself straight through the dark toward the other door, where he could hear the maid sobbing.Two steps, three, and then he hit her. She was standing and she screamed,