Read Online Beyond the Veil by Tim Marquitz - Free Book Online Page B

Karra had gotten to, but if we hit
the streets hard enough, we might well scare up something sooner. It was worth
a shot, and there was no arguing the fact that both of us were spoiling for a
fight. Violence is a great distraction. There’s something soothing about
punching someone in the face.
    I really didn’t want to think about what
Gorath intended to do with Karra. If he was using her to draw me out in order to
lure Lucifer to him, I felt reasonably confident she would be safe for a little
while…at least until he achieved his goal, but the longer we waited, the more
likely it became that something bad would happen. And with Karra, that could be
every second she was conscious and breathing. There was no way she would sit
there and let Gorath use her, even against Lucifer; too much of a scrapper for
that. She would fight and all hell would break loose. A sigh slipped out, and I
hoped she was all right. I couldn’t handle thinking otherwise.
    I still didn’t know how Gorath had captured
her, how he’d managed to corral and knock her out without getting his ugly ass
kicked. If he hurt her…
    My face warmed as I imagined the worst and
shook the images from my skull before they could latch on. If Gorath had hurt her, what Longinus did to
Mihheer was only a sample of what I’d do to the motherfucker when I caught him.
    “This way,” the girl said, pulling me from
my murderous thoughts.
    She slipped through yet another alley, not
more than a couple blocks from where we’d cornered her, and into a valley
created by the three and four story buildings that surrounded it. No lights flickered
in any of the windows, deep crevices of darkness devouring the lower halves of
the buildings at the back. A flat field of cleared rubble sat in between the
towering wrecks with absolutely nothing to block the view from the apartments
that looked down on us from every direction. It was the perfect spot for an
ambush, and she strode right into the center of it all and waved us on. Common
sense said to stay put at the far edge, but neither of us listened.
    “Stay here. I’ll bring him out.” The girl
darted off into the shadows of the building ahead, her orange figure fading
away into nothingness.
    Longinus glanced back at me over his
shoulder, a grim smile on his face. “Still think this is a good idea?” His gaze
strafed the hundreds of windows looming above. They made it impossible to know
which way an attack might come from.
    “Never thought it was a great idea to begin
with, we just didn’t have any other options that didn’t end in us killing the
one alien who’s supposed to know something.”
    “It worked out well enough with Mihheer.”
    I had to admit he had me there. I just
shrugged and kept my eyes on our surroundings. As much as I wanted to blow off
a little steam, I’d been shot in the head by a sniper once and wasn’t looking
for an encore. That shit hurt.
    The minutes dragged on, and I was starting
to feel like a lobster in a restaurant tank waiting to be plucked. Longinus
drifted forward with slow steps, putting some space between us. Every second
that passed found me hunching just a little lower. My hands twitched inside my
jacket as I fondled the grips of my guns. Just when I thought we were both
gonna lose all self-control and start breaking something, the girl returned.
    An old man clung to her arm. As they
slipped from the darkness and into the gloomy light, I spied the obvious. The
man was blind. His eyes were a milky white, no apparent pupils squirming in
their depths. The pair scuffed along the roughened asphalt—or whatever it
was—and came straight toward us. The old man was hunched and wore nothing but a
simple brown robe made airy by numerous holes. He’d worn the things out. My
gaze snapped upward at seeing his coin purse bouncing free beneath the holey
clothing.
    Longinus kept vigil while I stared—at the
guy’s face, not is package. The girl brought him to a halt before us.
    “These are