His rage needed an outlet. Pounding the wheel just fed a sense of futility. He had been working too close to his limits anyway. The battle had left him feeling too stretched thin. He had also lost twenty highly trained drones. Now he had to call in all his reserves.

Worse, much worse, Mary and Michael were still free.

He needed a quick infusion of energy, and he craved the bitter taste of violent death that was so like a dark chocolate liqueur. His gaze roamed the passing scenery with restless hunger as the black limo purred along the roads toward his rendezvous point.

At last he came upon a roadside establishment named Northside Restaurant, twelve miles northeast of Wolf Lake. He counted eight vehicles in the parking lot. The nearest buildings were two gas stations, easily fifty yards away.

This was perfect.

The limousine rolled to a smooth stop. As he stepped out of the vehicle, he checked that the drone’s handgun was in place in his shoulder holster. Then he strolled into the restaurant, his energy compressing in anticipation like a snake coiling to strike.

He stood just inside the doorway and counted the humans inside. Look at them, as lovely and vulnerable as a herd of gazelles. It was too bad he didn’t see anyone that would be suitable as a new host. He would have been happy to get rid of the ape suit. There were two waitresses, a short order cook (he might have to slaughter that greasy little man from a distance), a father and son, a couple of men lounging on stools at the counter, and a trio of bored teenagers.

Teenagers: young wanton, chaotic energy. Delicious.

“Mine,” he whispered to them. “You are mine.”

Look at them, living their lives in such ignorance. They should all bow down to him, the King of Kings.

One of the waitresses, a leggy woman in her forties with dyed blond hair, gave him a bright smile as she whisked around the end of the counter with a coffeepot. His gaze dropped to her name tag. Her name was Ruth. “Sit anywhere you like, hon,” she told him. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”

He smiled back and shook his head. “No, hon,” he said, in the drone’s coarse, husky smoker’s voice. “You’ll be with me right now.”

Her quick stride faltered and her smile faded. “Excuse me?”

After compressing his energy, he released it outward. Filled with the force of his pent-up rage, a psychic storm slammed into the restaurant. Napkins, condiments, dishes, glasses, cups and cutlery flew through the dining area, tossed airborne by the blast. The doors slammed shut. He walked to the leggy blonde, wrapped one of his disgusting hairy hands around her neck and jerked her toward him.

Her brown eyes filled with uncomprehending panic. She dropped the coffeepot. It shattered. She struggled against his hold. He put a hand at the back of her head, fastened his open mouth over hers in a travesty of a kiss and, in one long luxurious inhale, he drained her of her life’s energy.

It was like sucking nectar from a flower. Her traumatized spirit, separated so abruptly from its body, hovered near the ceiling of the restaurant before it fled with a wail.

He let go of her neck. The leggy blonde body collapsed to the floor.

Smiling, he looked around. The other seven occupants were too shocked by the poltergeist activity to have realized something terrible had just happened to Ruth.

A couple of teenagers pounded at the front doors, trying to get them open. The father had shoved his son underneath a table. As various items flew through the air, the father batted them away with his hands. Hissing smoke billowed from the kitchen. The short order cook screamed as boiling liquids splashed over him. A steak knife struck one of the men at the counter. The wounded man yanked the knife from his neck. Blood jetted from the puncture. The other man slapped the counter towel over the wound in an effort to staunch the bleeding.

Yes, it was self-indulgent of him. He supposed he shouldn’t succumb to temper tantrums. You could look at it as a waste of energy when he was already stretched too thin. Still he felt that, given the strength of his anger, he’d restrained himself rather admirably. Besides, Ruth’s life force sang in his veins, a potent aperitif. And he had more than enough victims in the restaurant with which to replenish himself.

He had always identified with the fox in a henhouse. Like the fox, he might be able to satisfy his need with just a couple of chickens, but once he got going he preferred to slaughter the whole flock for the sheer frenzied love of murder.

After he had slaked his appetite, the silence of a tomb fell in the restaurant. He pulled out his gun and shot the bodies. Then he called one of his drones at Quantico. Soon Mary and Michael would become the FBI’s prime suspects in the Michigan massacre, which would be discovered by a passing state patrol car within the next half hour.

It always paid to have corruption in high places.