Watchers

there.
    He went to the broken window and cautiously looked out onto the roof of the rain-washed porch. Nothing.
    Wind keened over the dangerously sharp shards of glass still bristling from the window frame.
    He started back toward the upstairs hail. He could see Nora out there, looking in at him, scared, but gamely clutching her Uzi. Behind her, the door to the future nursery opened, and it was there, yellow eyes aglow. Its monstrous jaws cracked wide, full of teeth far sharper than the wicked glass shards in the window frame.
    She was aware of it, started to turn, but it struck at her before she had a chance to fire. It tore the Uzi out of her hands.
    It had no chance to gut her with its razor-edged six-inch claws because, even as the beast was tearing the pistol out of her hands, Einstein charged it, snarling. With catlike quickness, The Outsider shifted its attention from Nora to the dog. It whipped around on him, lashed out as if its long arms Were constructed with more than one elbow joint. It snatched Einstein up in both horrendous hands.
    Crossing the studio to the hall door, Travis had no clear shot at The Outsider because Nora was between him and that hateful thing. As Travis reached the doorway, he cried out for her to fall down, to give him a line of fire, and she did, immediately, but too late. The Outsider scooped Einstein into the nursery and slammed the door, as if it were an evil nightmare-spawned jack-in-the-
    box that had popped out and popped back in with its prey, all in the blink of an eye.
    Einstein squealed, and Nora rushed the nursery door.
    “No!” Travis shouted, pulling her aside.
    He aimed the automatic carbine at the closed door and emptied the rest of the magazine into it, punching at least thirty holes in the wood, crying out through clenched teeth as pain flared through his shoulder. There was some risk of hitting Einstein, but the retriever would be in worse danger if Travis did not open fire. When the gun stopped spitting bullets, he ripped out the empty magazine, took a full magazine from his pocket and slammed that into the gun. Then he kicked open the ruined door and went into the nursery.
    The window stood open, curtains blowing in the wind.
    The Outsider was gone.
    Einstein was on the floor, against one wall, motionless, covered with blood.
    Nora made a wrenching sound of grief when she saw the retriever.
    At the window, Travis spotted splashes of blood leading across the porch roof. Rain was swiftly washing the gore away.
    Movement caught his eye, and he looked toward the barn, where The Outsider disappeared through the big door.
    Crouching over the dog, Nora said, “Oh my God, Travis, my God, after all he’s come through and now he has to die like this.”
    “I’m going after the son-of-a-bitching bastard,” Travis said ferociously. “It’s in the barn.”
    She moved toward the door, too, and he said, “No! Call Jim Keene and then stay with Einstein, stay with Einstein.”
    “But you’re the one who needs me. You can’t go after it alone.”
    “Einstein needs you.”
    “Einstein is dead,” she said through tears.
    “Don’t say that!” he screamed at her. He was aware that he was irrational, as if he believed Einstein would not really be dead until they said he was dead, but he could not control himself. “Don’t say he’s dead. Stay here with him, damn it. I’ve already hurt that fucking fugitive from a nightmare, hurt it bad I think, it’s bleeding, and I can finish it off myself. Call Jim Keene, stay with Einstein.”
    He was also afraid that, in all of this activity, she was going to induce a miscarriage, if she had not already done so. Then they would have lost not only Einstein but the baby.
    He left the room at a run.
    You’re in no condition to go into that barn, he told himself. You’ve got to cool down first. Telling Nora to call a vet for a dead dog, telling her to stay with it when, in fact, you could have used her at your side . . . No good. Letting rage and a thirst for vengeance get the best of you. No good.
    But he could not stop. All of his life he had lost people he loved, and except in Delta Force he’d never had anyone to strike back at because you can’t take vengeance on fate.. Even in Delta, the enemy was so faceless—the
    lumpish mass of maniacs and fanatics who were “international terrorism”— that vengeance provided little satisfaction. But here was an enemy of unparalleled evil, an enemy worthy of the name, and he