every

in equipment. Oddly enough, though, no one seemed to be using any of the latter; they all seemed to be working directly on the cars. The machinery itself was standing idle. In fact, given the sheen of “newness” on all that expensive gimmickry, most of it hadn’t ever been fired up.
Why buy all that stuff if you weren’t going to use it?
Tannim was looking for something, or someone, craning his head in every direction. Sam was unable to get his attention, and really, didn’t try very hard. There was definitely something odd about this place. There was a facade—and it was in here, not out in the offices.
Finally, as a little group of people emerged from behind one of the cars and its attendant machines, Tannim spotted whoever it was he was looking for among them. He waved his hand in the air, and called out to them.
“Yo!” he shouted, his voice somehow carrying over the din. “Kevin! Over here!”
A tall, very blond man turned around in response to that shout, green eyes searching over the mass of machines and people.
And Sam felt such a shock he feared for a moment that he’d had a stroke. Those eyes—that face—they were familiar.
Hauntingly, frighteningly familiar, though he hadn’t seen them in nearly fifty years.
He knew this man—
—who wasn’t a man.

CHAPTER THREE
It was the same face—not a similar face, the same face, the same man. Identical. There was no confusing it, nor those green, cat-slitted eyes.
Inhuman eyes; eyes that had never been human.
Sam fell back across the decades, to his childhood, and his home, and one moonlit, Irish night.

Sam stumbled along beside his father, miserable right down to his socks, and wanting to be home with all his five-year-old heart.
“Da—me tum hurts,” Sam whined.
The full moon above them gave a clear, clean light, shining down on the dirt path that led between the pub and John Kelly’s little cottage. A month ago, they wouldn’t have been on this path. A month ago, Sam’s mummy, Moira, would have made them a good supper, one that wouldn’t have hurt Sam’s tummy the way the greasy sausage-and-potato mix the pub served up did. In fact, a month ago, John wouldn’t have been anywhere near the pub, and the pint of whiskey he had in his back pocket would have lasted him the month, not the night. He would’ve had tea with his good dinner, not washed bad roast down with more whiskey.
But that was a month and more ago, before Moira took a cough that became worse, and then turned into something