Shadowfires

Suddenly it seemed important to know what he was doing
because, by secretly observing him, she might learn something that
would guarantee her escape or even something that would give her an
advantage over him in a confrontation at some later time. She eased
along the rock formation, peering into several convexities and flute
holes, until she found a wind-sculpted bore about three inches in
diameter, through which she could see Eric.
    He was still kneeling on the wet ground, his broad humped back
bowed to the driving rain. He appeared to have… changed. He did not
look quite the same as when he had confronted her outside the public
rest rooms. He was still monstrously deformed, though in a vaguely
different way from before. A subtle difference but important… What
was it, exactly? Peering out of the flute hole in the stone, wind
whistling softly through the eight- or ten-inch-deep bore and blowing
in her face, Rachael strained her eyes to get a better view of him.
The rain and murky light hampered her, but she thought he seemed more
apelike. Hulking, slump-shouldered, slightly longer in the arms.
Perhaps he was also less reptilian than he had been, yet still with
those grotesque, bony, long, and wickedly taloned hands.
    Surely any change she perceived must be imaginary, for the very
structure of his bones and flesh
couldn't have altered noticeably in less than a quarter of an hour. Could it? Then again… why not? If his genetic integrity had collapsed thoroughly since he had beaten Sarah Kiel last night-when he'd
still been human in appearance-if his face and body and limbs had
been altered so drastically in the twelve hours between then and now,
the pace of his metamorphosis was obviously so frantic that, indeed,
a difference might be noticeable in just a quarter of an hour.
    The realization was unnerving.
    It was followed by a worse realization: Eric was holding a thick,
writhing snake-one hand gripping it near the tail, the other hand
behind its head-and he was eating it alive. Rachael saw the snake's jaws unhinged and gaping, fangs like twin slivers of ivory in the flickering storm light, as it struggled unsuccessfully to curl its head back and bite the hand of the man-thing that held it. Eric was tearing at the middle of the serpent with his inhumanly sharp teeth, ripping hunks of meat loose and chewing enthusiastically. Because his jaws were heavier and longer than the jaws of any man, their obscenely eager movement-the crushing and grinding of the snake-could be seen even at this distance.
    Shocked and nauseated, Rachael wanted to turn away from the spy-
hole in the rock. However, she did not vomit, and she did not turn
away, because her nausea and disgust were outweighed by her
bafflement and her need to understand Eric.
    Considering how much he wanted to get his hands on her, why had he
abandoned the chase? Had he forgotten her? Had the snake bitten him
and had he, in his savage rage, traded bite for bite?
    But he was not merely striking back at the snake: he was eating it, eagerly consuming one solid mouthful after another. Once,
when Eric looked up at the fulminous heavens, Rachael saw his storm-
lit countenance twisted in a frightening expression of inhuman
ecstasy. He shuddered with apparent delight as he tore at the
serpent. His hunger seemed as urgent and insatiable as it was
unspeakable.
    Rain slashed, wind moaned, thunder crashed, lightning flashed, and
she felt as if she were peering through a chink in the walls of hell,
watching a demon devour the souls of the damned. Her heart hammered
hard enough to compete with the sound of the rain drumming on the
ground. She knew she should run, but she was mesmerized by the pure
evil of the sight framed in the flute hole.
    She saw a second snake-then a third, fourth, fifth-oozing out of
the rain-pooled ground around Eric's knees. He was kneeling at the entrance to a den of the deadly creatures, a nest that was apparently flooding with the runoff from the storm. The rattlers wriggled forth and, finding the man-thing in their midst, immediately struck at his thighs and arms, biting him repeatedly. Though Eric neither cried out nor flinched, Rachael was filled with relief, knowing that he would soon collapse from the effects of the venom.
    He threw aside the half-eaten snake and seized another. With no
diminishment of his perverse hunger, he sank his pointed, razored
teeth into the snake's living flesh and tore loose one