It comes slow and careful through the darkness. It feels at home in the dark, light reveals too much. The shadows and dark places are a home. It can feel the prey as it moves oblivious through the darkness.
There was a time long ago, many prey lifetimes ago, when it would haunt the dark woods, waiting for the prey to come into the deep night of the forest. It would wait high in trees, or low in the undergrowth, for the prey to blunder into its reach. Then it would stretch, grab and devour, leaving only a memory for the prey’s kin to mourn.
Then, though, it moved, made its home in the prey’s cavernous cities. There were more shadows, more dark places and much more prey. The creature could sit up high on the roofs and watch. It could wait for the choicest prey to pass by. The creature could hide in the deep, almost solid, darkness in the cellars and basements for the prey to come by, sometimes oblivious, sometimes wary. But, all too often, wary of other dangers than the creature waiting to rip their lives away.
The creature knew this world belonged to it, and not to the prey, and it liked it that way.
[Books by David Hadley are available here (UK) or here (US)]
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