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with thoughts of Saul Benton and coming up with some clever way to meet him face to face.
     

CHAPTER  TWO
     
     
    1
     
    Saul Benton could not recall the last time he had felt such fury. His chest hurt with it, burned as if filled with aggravated hornets wanting to be released from their hive. Safe in his cabin, miles from the one who had put him in such a state, Saul felt none of the relief that usually accompanied leaving Red Creek and its miserable inhabitants behind. His cabin had always been his refuge, his place of peace and patience; now, it felt more like a prison than anything even remotely pleasant.
    Saul growled. He kept seeing Lester Dobbs in his mind’s eye – the pallid face, the glazed eyes, that damned smirk that had Saul itching to break the bastard’s skull , never mind his nose. Even worse, he kept replaying the insults Lester had tossed so carelessly at him. Truth be told, it wasn’t the talk about his father that had angered Saul so much. It was the fact that such private and personal information was now apparently common knowledge in this wretched little town.
    He found it funny that not one of the stories making rounds around town  touched even the slightest bit on the real mystery in the Benton family. The fact that he hardly ever went out after dusk should have clued even the most idiotic of Red Creek’s residents into what h e reall y was. If Lester Dobbs had known all of the details surrounding his father’s death, he would have known to keep his distance from Saul. Or possibly round up a posse looking for Saul’s head on a stick.
    Yet, here Saul still was – very much alive and unharmed, with no one the wiser about what he got up to after sundown. And by some kind gesture of the universe, he had been left mostly alone. When his father had been murdered so viciously in the woods further out behind the cabin, there had been the occasional group of curious teenagers that had come out to the property, but they had been harmless. Their visits had boiled down to a few yells into the night and discarded beer cans in the driveway the following day.
    If that’s all he had to endure during the rest of his time in Red Creek, Saul would happily take it.
    After coming back from his confrontation with Lester Dobbs, Saul had put away his groceries and gone out onto his back porch. Night had fallen almost completely by then, cloaking the shapes of the trees that surrounded the cabin in ink-smudged shadows. Their branches swayed with the wind – dark silhouettes dancing to an unheard tune. Saul had always found the sight of them beautiful; he supposed it was the same sort of pleasure a human felt when they saw a sunrise.
    Saul found no joy in sunrise. The best part about the rising of the sun was the excitement of retreating back to a dark place with the coppery taste of blood on his tongue. He had not experienced this in a while, but the memory of it was an easy one to conjure. Some old folklore had once hinted at the fact that the ingestion of human blood worked wonders on the memory. As far as Saul was concerned, that was incredibly true. The memory of the blood itself was unforgettable – and highly addictive.
    His temper finally cooling down, Saul became aware of a new feeling squeezing his chest: Regret. Before his time in Red Creek, regret was not something that he had known. Saul could only assume that living in the midst of humans for so many years was making him soft. He was beginning to identify with the town’s residents in too many ways, to experience their lives in a manner he was not accustomed to. The endless TV programs, websites, the boring routine of daily life – it was all becoming only too familiar.
    Saul shook thoughts of Lester Dobbs and Red Creek from his head; enough. The Cabin was his place of peace, his time to be as he was. Humans had no power here.
    Saul stared out into the gathering night, troubled. Something was different – a subtle wrongness in the air, a presence