Read Alien Hunter: Underworld for Free Online

had to do it; your mind could not.
    Animal sounds returned, the scuttling of shrews in the late-season leaves, the snorting of an opossum, the rustling journey of a family of raccoons.
    He thought nothing. Felt nothing. Only his breath whispering, only his blood running. He was the perfect hunter now, a big cat at one with the night.
    Ten o’clock came, time to move.
    What slid from the vehicle was more animal than man, a panther. Stealthy and swift, he slipped off toward the house with a smooth and powerful gait, running as silently as the air.

 
    CHAPTER FOUR
    AS FLYNN drew nearer to the house, he heard something unexpected: voices. There was a man speaking, low and warm, a night voice. He could hear the desire in it.
    Eve Miller’s reply was softly intimate.
    He knew instantly that this was what Eve had been concealing when he questioned her, and why she showed so little grief.
    He went closer yet, slipping onto the front porch of the cabin, dropping low, then raising his head just enough to see in the picture window.
    A man of maybe fifty in worn jeans and an open shirt was sitting beside Eve on the couch, watching her with eager eyes. A leather jacket was thrown over a side chair. Hanging on its back was a shoulder holster. Flynn remembered how she’d said the word “sheriff,” tasting it, and knew that this was the man.
    His arm was around her, but he wasn’t consoling her. She was flushed with pleasure.
    Flynn went back to cover, then swung up into the oak that overhung the cabin, climbing with swift ease into its upper branches. From here, he had a view of both the sky and the roof.
    He concentrated on what he was smelling and hearing, as an animal would. He noted the scent of rotting oak leaves, the sharper odor of pine, the tang of chimney smoke. No trace of the eerie stink of aliens, though. Methodically, he looked from place to place, watching for even the slightest change, the thickening of a shadow, the suggestion of movement in the dark.
    Below, the lights of the house went out. Soon, laughter rippled faintly, and then the shuffling rhythm of lovemaking.
    Eventually, silence fell. An owl passed low over the roof and was gone. A real owl, he hoped, but there was no way to be sure.
    Then he felt a change, just the slightest tremble in the tree’s core. In response to the shudder, a leaf fell, slipping downward, making whispered sounds as it touched other leaves.
    He knew for certain that something else was with him in this tree, something very quiet, very stealthy.
    A night wind murmured. On the distance, something cried out. Farther off, a dog began to mourn, its voice caressing the silence.
    All the nearby animal sounds had stopped. No owl muttered; no breeze sighed. It was as if the world had entered a zone of silence.
    Below him, the house slept.
    The tree trembled again. Something was climbing. Coming closer. Very stealthy.
    Moving so slightly that the shift of weight could be detected only by the most sensitive creature, he pressed his ear against the tree trunk.
    The scratch of claws, then silence.
    If the aliens got too close to him, he would either be captured or killed—their call. They could disable the human nervous system with a touch. He’d fall like a corpse and be collected and carried off into their ship. In the stink and filth of it, he would be strapped onto their table. Then, to better enjoy his struggles, they would release his nervous system. Even knowing that he was giving them pleasure by doing it, he knew that he would fight those straps with all his might. He would not be able to stop himself.
    Click, scrape. Then silence. Then again, very soft.
    His fingers slid to the hilt of his knife. He could throw it a hundred feet with pinpoint accuracy. He could cut with it just in the right way to pop the head from the body. Then you stomped the head. It was brutal and it was messy, but it worked.
    The dark grew deeper, the silence more profound.
    There was