Anyone who has ever sat and watched a spider as it folded an insect into its web could tell you. There was something fascinating about watching predation when the prey wasn't you.
She knelt, still and silent on the floor, her legs as weak and useless as they'd been after the accident. Her breath felt trapped inside her lungs. She didn't know if it was fear, or the children that clung to her so tightly. On either side her sons stared, no more able to pull their eyes away than she.
Across the floor, their grandmother was dying.
She could only watch him as he worked, his face an expression of vacant concentration as he examined every inch, every curve with an almost careful touch. What he was seeing, reading she could not even begin to guess, but after a subjective eternity he let Angela drop. She fell solidly, stiffly, lifeless and with empty eyes. Her blood pooled onto the carpet, staining what remained of her hair. It coated his fingers where he stood, so calmly, the corners of his mouth lifting in amusement at whatever he'd learned.
"Sweet dreams, mother." His low, flat voice somehow manifested a pale humor in its lifelessness.
There was something fascinating about a predator when the prey wasn't you.
When he turned around, when his dark eyes fell on her, she thought she might find the strength to scream. All that issued forth was a strangled noise, a sob. It was all she could do with her trembling hands, weak arms, to push her children behind her, against the wall, behind her. As he moved toward her, long strides eating the distance between them, those eyes pinned her like a knife. He knelt down before her, bringing his face level with her own. When the monster had emerged, façade of her husband melting away, part of her sanity had broken at his unspeakably cold gaze. It had frozen her, just as it had frozen Angela. Angela would never move again.
The look in those eyes was different, now, as he watched her. The look was just as consuming, predatory, lustful. But there was nothing cold about it. She was chilled by his fingers where they brushed her cheek. She shivered as the blood rolled down her chin. His thumb caressed the skin just beside the corner of her mouth. Lightly, lightly. For all her wanting, she could not pull away. The gentleness of the kiss was tainted by the smell of blood, the metallic taste of fear on her tongue.
After he'd gone, she lifted a trembling hand to her face. Her fingers came away red.
He was gone, but he'd left her with a stain.