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But no bird could be so large. What the hell was it?
    Only now did she allow herself to move her head slightly in the darkness. She did so with infinitesimal movement. One tiny fraction of an inch at a time. Whatever it was in the room could not possibly detect the slow movement.
    Could it?
    Her eyes moved to the ceiling above her dressing table. All she saw was darkness. One large patch of darkness. The longer she stared at the darkness, the more she thought it odd.
    Why was that one patch so dark? It seemed to be blacker than -.
    Something moved past her door.
    It took every bit of control for Ebony to bite back a scream. Whoever – or whatever – it was that had moved by had done so in complete silence. It had done so without even making the sound of a foot tread on the timber floors. Like a ghost.
    How was such a thing possible?
    Now Ebony returned her gaze to the space above her dressing table and she felt a growing horror that chilled her to the soul.
    The patch above the dressing table was no longer in darkness. If anything, the ceiling looked uniformly dark. She shifted her eyes again to the dressing table next to her bed. Her bedside lamp was within reach. Within her bedside drawer lay a gun. Dan had been able to procure it for her from a gun dealer in town. The poor man had thought he was selling it to a husband and wife from Tallahassee instead of a pair of teenagers with no identification.
    Another sound came from the ceiling.
    Directly above her.
    Ebony had never felt such terror in her life.
    The dark shape that had hovered over her dressing table now hovered directly over her bed. It clung to the ceiling directly over her. To make matters worse she thought she could make out some detail. In its own strange way it looked like a spider.
    An enormous spider.
    She felt sick.
    I have super powers , Ebony reminded herself. I can transmute a substance into anything of my choosing. I can turn a human being into salt if necessary. I can turn lead into gold.
    She had even spoken to Chad about how she could use non lethal force against people if necessary. A person would be rendered immobile if she grabbed their clothing – their shirt, for instance – and transformed it into steel. They would be stuck in position, unable to make a move.
    Think steel , she told herself. Think steel.
    Just as she decided to reach across and turn her lamp on, the shape on the ceiling shifted position slightly. Two tiny red balls of light came to life directly above her. Ebony felt her heart chugging like a steam engine. Her whole body grew rigid as if she were slowly turning to ice.
    Eyes.
    A pair of glowing red eyes peered down from the ceiling at her.
    Her left arm shot out and grabbed the light switch for the lamp. She snapped it on. At the same time she reached up with her hand.
    “Steel!” she snapped. “St-.”
    She got no further. A man lay back comfortably on the ceiling staring down at her. He was naked except for a pair of leather briefs. He appeared to be about twenty-five years of age, clean shaven, muscular and very pale. In the darkness his eyes had burned bright red, but now the light was on they were black. Even the normally white pupils were black. It was like looking at someone who had two perfectly black balls in their eye sockets instead of their eyes.
    He smiled.
    There was nothing nice about that smile.
    Ebony decided to scream. She was good at screaming. The sound would wake the entire household. She got as far as drawing back her breath. Then she looked into the man’s eyes and saw he loved her.
    He really, really loved her. It was a timeless love. An eternal love. For as long as she lived she would never find a love like this. Their love would exist from now till all life faded on Earth. Even now time seemed to fall away. The man leapt down from the ceiling and landed nimbly on his feet next to her bed. His eyes remained on her the whole time.
    “My name is Anthony,” he said. “And you