Free Night Watcher by Chris Longmuir

sending a shiver through him. Gently he lifted her arm off his body and slid out of the bed. His hair flopped over his face and he reached onto the bedside table feeling for a scrunchie to fasten his hair behind his head in its familiar pony-tail.
    Soft carpet pile tickled his toes while cool air bathed his skin. He tucked the duvet around Nicole’s naked body and, reaching for his bathrobe, crept out of the bedroom.
    The house throbbed with silence as he walked barefoot to his study. Once inside he swung gently in his swivel chair and powered up the computer. It came alive with a steady hum, the screen flickering in the dark, competing with the moonlight. Scott turned his attention to the chat rooms. There was no competition. He would rather communicate with his computer than watch the moon any night.
    Several hours passed before he returned to the bed he shared with Nicole.

CHAPTER TWELVE
     
    She had seen him. He had not meant to let her see him. But, remembering the startled look in her eyes, he shivered with pleasure.
    There had been scepticism in her husband’s eyes when he crossed the room to look out the window. The man had not seen him though. He was too quick and clever for him.
    Now he lay on the earth under the windowsill inhaling the smell of mould until it filled his nostrils and intoxicated him with its aroma. But he knew he could not stay there because, even though the husband did not believe, he was coming outside to look. He could not let the husband see him, or he would lose his hold of fear over the woman.
    Tree branches beckoned to him from the orchard and he slid beneath their protective arms. He slipped from tree to tree until he reached his own special tree: the one with the massive, spreading branches reaching over the wall, allowing him access to the grounds.
    He lay along a branch, moulding himself to it until he was almost a part of the tree itself. He watched the husband leave the house and enter his territory: the territory of the night and of the dark.
    The husband was a fool. A simpleton who could not even check the grounds properly, and never suspected his presence here in the tree. So, he watched and waited while the man pranced around and made faces at his wife through the window.
    Fool!
    Snakelike, he slid out of the tree and crawled to the window when the man returned to the house. The woman was not pleased. He could see it in her face. But she bowed down to her husband and hid her feelings behind a mask.
    He waited and watched. He saw her use her sex to enslave the man. It was the way she wielded her power. Afterwards, he saw the husband escape from her bed. He did not blame him. The man probably sensed her power, her desire to enslave him and make him do things against his will, like the evil deed he had done for her that dark summer night which now seemed so long ago.
    He continued to watch, for this was when the real demons appeared. He could see them on her face as she slept. They made her toss and turn, although she did not wake until after the man returned to sleep beside her.
    The man would tame her demons for a time. But they would come back again, because she had the power.
    Only he could kill the demons for all time. And he was the only one who could take her power away from her. It was his mission. Given to him by God.
    A slight breeze ruffled through the trees and bushes, the night was almost over and soon it would be dawn. Like all nocturnal creatures he would have to leave. So he sidled into the orchard, up the tree and over the wall.
    He had things to do before dawn.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
     
    Patrick Drake’s Department Store was one of the most impressive buildings in Dundee. It spread over a whole block of the High Street with large display windows in three streets, and reached backwards, almost to Whitehall Crescent, at its rear. Not only did it occupy so much ground space, but it also stretched upwards for five stories and down for one. If you counted the bottom