Chapter 32"Oh My God!!” A voice shattered the musical tempo. “It’s here. It’s Here!!!!"A female leopardess in the night roared, but as fast as it started her voice died away. Strangled off.Every head snapped up, Leopard males all around the dance floor, moved to protect their women. A pure shift of awareness took over. Hisses and feral growls climbed across the air. Brandon’s hair stood on end as an aggressive awareness subverted everything else. Something was out there. He could feel it. Something that had been out there for days...waiting...watching. Hunting.Suddenly someone else screamed in the fire light across the grounds to the left. The dancers parted and there just off the edge of the light. Something large stood in the shadows, something too tall, but also hunched over. It could have been a man.A horribly misshapen man. Something breathing, but also chittering. Piercing sounds somewhere between a bird and a dying hyena peeled into the air. Arms too long and skinny...endi

Chapter 34A small zing went through Ezkeiels senses. A ghost of a pain in his shoulder and head. He didn’t know why he felt it...or what it meant. It was a bad feeling. It made his stomach turn. It was a feeling that for some odd reason had him thinking about Brandon.Did he listen to me and go back to the mansion?A part of Ezkeiel wondered thinking of the green eyed man, but another part of Ezkeiel knew that he couldn’t afford to have Brandon on his mind just then.Especially when there were people dying around him.Claw and fang proved woefully ineffective on the Ghouls. The hard taunt olive colored flesh and concrete hard sinew of their torsos and limbs prevented Ezkeiel from inflicting more then superficial wounds at first.With this being the fourth time that Ezekiels had had to go up against the supine and deadly Ghouls he and his Clans men were mostly able to avoid their talons and venom....but dispatching the Ghouls proved nearly impossible.The three Ghouls that had launche

Chapter 36The sharp sounds of flesh being ripped from a body was horrendous.IT was a sound that should have stroked the primitive need of his beast to seek out prey.....but in that moment Ezekiel had never known a worse sound to fall upon his ear.But none of this was compared to the sight that befell him as he and his family split off into the night to hunt for the last Ghoul invader.On an odd hunch...and a strange sense of dread beckoning him Ezekiel dashed to the far south of the Mansion.Ezekiel danced in a frustrated fashion past the few stragglers that were still trying to flee the area of the attack and get to safety, until the “Schleck” and snarl and slurp of something big feasting.And there was Brandon...dead. A still pale silhouette laid low beneath the gnashing, snapping teeth of the Ghoul. He was on his stomach, a small boy wrapper underneath him....and his back....was sliced wide open. The Ghouls face buried deep in his back and chest cavity. Chewing him up like hambu

Chapter 38Ezekiel didn’t have time to think about the blood on his body, or the anger boiling in his veins. He turned from the carcass of the dead Ghoul and rushed over to the two still and silent bodies in the field.The child was there beside him. Ezekiel didn’t have to see the blood on the child’s mouth, or the black branches of poison beneath the skin of his small body to know that the boy really was gone now.With hair almond brown and eyes tinted green and frozen open the small boys chest didn’t move. The sight of his small body stole over Ezekiel chilling him and numbing him at the same time. The parents would be devastated. Ezekiel knew that a lot of people would be filled with sorrow once all of the chaos had settled down and the dead were fully counted out.A part of Ezekiel urged him to reach for the child and cradle him closer, but as Ezekiel stood leaning over the two bodies in the earth, all Ezekiel wanted to do was grab Brandon and rush him to his mother...because unli

“Another LOCK DOWN!!!” Brandon screamed minutes after running into his room and slamming the door shut between him and Ezekiel’s sharp gaze.He didn’t care if he was heard. He screamed because he couldn’t bring himself to break down and cry again like he had shamefully just did in Ezekiel’s embrace.“This can’t be fucking happening to me....NOT now!”Brandon walked across the room and slammed his fist into the lamp. The heavy glass toppled swiftly in wake of his frustration and shattered, splaying shards all across the wooden floor. And Brandon didn’t stop there. He kicked the mattress, forcing the heavy wooden frame to shift half a foot, then he swiped his arm across the top of the drawer knocking every item atop it to the floor including the pack he had received from Glen and a decorated box of mahogany and lace that held smooth stones and beadsMORE GHOULS HAVE APPEARED! PEOPLE HAVE DIED. AND TO TOP IT OFF THE FUCKING LOCK DOWN HAS BEEN REINSTATED!! IT’S ALL JUST MORE WASTED TIME!