Read Online Voracious by ALICE HENDERSON - Free Book Online Page B

locked the door when something wet and warm splashed on her hand. Instinctively she jerked it back, seeing a rivulet of red dribble between her fingers. A few more splatters hit the floor in front of her.
    Blood on the brown floor .
    Then a thick, warm drool rained down on her head.
    Gasping, Madeline reeled back, confused, and looked up. The bathroom had a high ceiling that came to a point, with rafters below it.
    And hanging over one of the rafters was a corpse of a man, his face twisted in a hideous scream.
    It took Madeline only a second to take in that the corpse was naked save for its underwear and one prominent piece of clothing: a hat.
    A ranger’s hat.
    And then, a second later, her brain registered the cause of the dripping.
    The ranger she had spoken to earlier was up there in the shadows with the body, chewing on a tattered leg, digging his nails hungrily and greedily into the raw, bloody flesh.
    Then she watched transfixed as the ranger’s head suddenly elongated and shifted, becoming more streamlined as the skin grew darker, darker, until it was an inky black. The fingers grew long and wiry, claws springing from the tips. It continued to tear into the body, its brown ranger’s clothes stained red, until it looked down at Madeline with the same red disc eyes that had frightened her so the night before.
    “Forgive my rudeness. Meat is best when it’s still warm,” it said in a low voice, a piece of ragged flesh hanging from its mouth.
    Madeline’s jaw fell open. She had never talked to a ranger at all. This … thing had killed the ranger and taken its place, shape-shifting from hideous creature to human with so much ease, and now it paused from its meal, looking down on her with hunger, readying to tear into her, just as it had probably torn into Noah up on the mountain.
    Wiping its dripping mouth, it leapt down from the rafters, landing solidly in a crouch before her.
    Madeline screamed.

SHE spun toward the door, the creature leaping up, claws jerking her backpack roughly and raking through the fleece jacket.
    Her hiking boots, wet with blood, slid noisily on the smooth floor. In the confines of the vaulted toilet, the thing was close behind her, lunging at her back, trying to drag her down by her pack. She felt claws dig into the jacket again, holding her back momentarily before the material tore free. Quickly she wrenched open the door and ran out into the open, not daring to look back. Her eyes scanned the area for a weapon, but she saw none, just the ground sloping away into the forest. She stopped at the back entrance of the ranger station and ripped the door open. Dashing down a narrow hallway, she burst through to the main room, knocking over a display on wildflowers as she passed it, hoping to impede the thing.
    She knew she couldn’t outrun it, heard the door slam shut behind her as the thing entered the station.
    Then she spied a fire ax propped up by the main door. Lunging at it, she grabbed the handle and whirled around at full tilt. The creature was too far away, and she spun frantically in almost a complete circle, falling off balance and stumbling. The ax connected violently with the wooden door frame and stuck fast.
    Panicked, she tried to wrench it free, her hands burning with friction on the handle. The thing sped forward, a fanged black figure in a blood-soaked ranger’s uniform, now mere feet away. She gripped the ax tightly, working it quickly back and forth. Five feet. It began to give way. Four feet. She wrenched the ax head free. Three feet. Swinging the weapon with everything in her, she connected with the creature’s chest. Bones snapped audibly. Howling, it spun away, gripping its dark flesh as blood sprayed the room. The handle wrenched out of her fingers, and she backed away. Screaming, the creature loped madly away from her, retreating down the corridor, where it banged against one of the walls. At the end of the hall, near the generator room it had entered before, it