Free Supernatural--Cold Fire by John Passarella

grateful he didn’t smash their big display windows or break into their shops and steal stuff.
    Taking position behind Flanagan’s Pub, he took careful aim. “This one’s for Mrs. Garrity and the never-ending term paper,” he said with a wicked grin, imagining the mole on the corner of her forehead, and launched a metal ball at the first caged light. Direct hit! The bulb burst with a deep
pop
sound and a slight sizzle of electricity before bits of glass clinked all over the ground, like a miniature orchestra warming up.
    His steel ball rattled around the cage for a moment before striking the wall and rolling toward his feet. Plucking it off the ground, he moved to the rear of the next shop, Sal’s Pizza Palace, if he recalled the order of the stores correctly. Again, he took aim. “Ah, for Mr. Uphoff and that D+ on my last exam. Writing ‘Try Harder’ followed by three exclamation marks really helps. How about you try harder to be a better teacher, jackass!”
    He released the shot—missed. Though he flinched at the steel-on-steel ping, the ricochet sailed wide, harmless. “Figures,” he muttered. “Guess I need to try harder!”
    His next shot scored. Definite sizzle this time.
    Moving sideways down the line, he positioned himself behind the rear entrance of the third shop, a dry cleaner or temp agency, he couldn’t remember. He fished a shot out of his plastic bag, deciding whose face would make a perfect target, when his cell phone buzzed. Heaving a sigh, he said, “What now?”
    He tugged the phone from his back pocket, checked the caller ID: Chloe.
    “C’mon,” he said. “Give it a break already.”
    He tapped the ignore button and shoved the phone back in his pocket before proceeding to knock out the third light. Unfortunately, he’d been so upset by yet another call from Chloe that he’d forgotten to pick a target for the light.
Wasted a bulb for nothing!
Not like he could retroactively assign a face to the bulb.
    With a sigh he moved on to light number four, but was interrupted by another call. Chloe again. “She can
not
take a hint,” he mumbled. “Save it for tomorrow, Chloe. I’m fried over this crap.”
    Maybe she can be the face of light number four
, he thought. She wouldn’t give him a moment’s peace. Worse than his damn parents. Powering off the phone, he put it away and tried to shake off the interruption.
    He took aim—
    And smelled freshly popped popcorn. Made him think of settling into the darkness of a movie theater to see the latest summer action blockbuster; overhyped more often than not, but a happy diversion for a few hours, away from people making demands of his time, an island of serenity during the projected chaos and one-liners. He pulled back on the rubber tubing and took aim at the fourth light again—
    —and the light blew out.
    But he hadn’t released the steel ball. It sat in the rubber pad, full of potential energy, as his physics teacher might say. Then, one by one, each caged light in the row of stores popped out. Some merely winked out. Others shattered. But he hadn’t moved.
    “What the hell—?”
    Something scraped the ground behind him.
    For a moment he worried the shopping center had hired a security guard to patrol the place at night. A security guard with a popcorn cart. But as he spun around, an apology or some lame excuse trying to take form in his mind, he caught a whiff of something foul, like an animal carcass left on the side of the road too long. But what he saw was not an animal. He had the fleeting impression of utter darkness mixed with corpse-pale flesh, straggly hair and strangely elongated fingers, somebody in a horror costume maybe, but he sensed she—yes a
she
—was not entirely human. Something that emerged from the nightmares of a fevered mind after gorging on tainted food in a serial killer’s house, something that couldn’t exist but terrified at the level of instinct.
    The wrist rocket and ammo slipped from his numb