Nocturnal

The Hunt

Rex stopped walking. He knelt to the sidewalk and leaned against a building wall. He sat very still.

Rex waited.

A block ahead, a boy in a dark sweatshirt stopped and looked back. His head moved, his eyes searched, but after a few seconds, the boy turned away and kept moving down Laguna Street.

Rex waited a few seconds, then he followed.

Even in the rain and the wind, Rex smelled something that made his brain buzz, made his chest all vibratey.

He smelled blood.

Alex’s blood.

Marco was probably dead. Rex felt sad about that. Marco had been a nice guy. He had obeyed. Rex had watched the brief fight between Marco and the man in black, then that arrow hit Marco in the chest. And just after that, Rex saw Alex running away.

Maybe Rex could have helped Marco, but he could not, would not let Alex Panos escape.

Rex had followed Alex, using the night, the rain, the wind and the blankets to stay as hidden as possible. He couldn’t believe how well the blankets worked — when he did pass people on the sidewalk, they steered clear. No one wanted to talk to a stinky bum. Rex was a shadow, like those black panthers in the jungle that moved so quiet no one saw them.

He had nowhere to go. The cops would know he’d killed Roberta, so he couldn’t go home. He couldn’t go back to Marco’s basement — what if Marco had ID on him with that address? The cops would look there, too. Rex didn’t even have a place to sleep.

And he didn’t care, because sleep didn’t matter.

What mattered was the hunt.

Rex felt alive, Rex felt strong, Rex felt like he could walk all night and into the next day. Sooner or later, Alex Panos would stop.

And then, Rex would make him pay.