Bloodstone

Read Online Bloodstone by Nancy Holzner - Free Book Online Page A

Book: Bloodstone by Nancy Holzner Read Free Book Online
Authors: Nancy Holzner
Ads: Link
toe. Yup. Killed it dead. Juliet stared at the corpse as if she couldn’t fathom what it was.
    I tried again. “How badly are you hurt? Can you walk?”
    She extended her leg toward me. The bloody wound where Brown Robe had tried to saw through her leg gaped. The bone, absurdly white, showed in the ragged cut. That wasn’t good. Juliet should have started to heal already.
    “It’s the silver,” she said. “It slows healing. As long as that’s in contact with my skin . . .” She hugged herself. “And I’m so famished.”
    She looked terrible. Purple crescents, so dark they were almost black, ringed her eyes. Her skin, always pale, looked dead white, like those guards who’d been drained of blood.
    The guards. The one who’d let me into Juliet’s cell carried that huge ring of keys. One of them had to open Juliet’s shackle. Once the silver was off her, she’d gain strength and start to heal.
    I hoped.
    I hurried to the guard who’d fallen in the hallway. His key ring jutted out from his hip. I removed the keys and started back to Juliet’s cell. Along the way, I noticed that one of the gray metal doors was stenciled with the word Kitchen . I tried the knob; it opened.
    The Goon Squad’s kitchen looked more like a break room. In its center stood a table, magazines and newspaper sections strewn across its top. There was a microwave and a coffeemaker on a counter to my right. Beyond the counter was a refrigerator.
    I opened the fridge and surveyed its contents. On the top shelf sat a carton of milk, a couple of brown bags, and a Tupperware container of some kind of pasta. The next shelf down held what I was looking for: bottles of blood. Juliet had complained it was cold and watered-down, but it would give her some nourishment.
    With four bottles clenched in my arms, I left the kitchen and returned to Juliet’s cell. She was still on the cot, rhythmically kicking the dead Old One with her good foot. As soon as she saw what I carried, she reached for the bottles. She downed the first two without taking a breath. I started to uncap the third, but she shook her head.
    “Can you get this silver off me?”
    I sorted through the keys until I found a few that looked like they might fit the shackle. On the third try, the lock clicked open. Juliet sighed with relief as the silver fell away from her skin. I dropped the shackle on the floor, away from her. A puff of smoke went up where some silver links touched the Old One’s body. I picked up the chain again, considering—it made a pretty good weapon against the Old Ones.
    I wrapped the length of chain around my waist, like a belt, the perfect accessory for my ruined dress. My kind of fashion statement: Mess with me and you’re dead.
    Juliet scooted forward to the edge of the cot. “I’m a bit better now,” she said. “Let’s go.”
    I checked her leg. It didn’t look better. If anything, it looked worse: foul-smelling, greenish pus mixed with the blood that ran toward her ankle. I cut a strip of cloth from the fallen Old One’s robe and used it to bind up the wound.
    I looked at Juliet’s bright orange prison outfit, PRISONER stenciled in bold letters across the back. Not exactly subtle. “Would you wear that thing’s robe?” I asked. “We could pull the hood forward to hide your face.”
    She wrinkled her nose with distaste, but she nodded. I stripped the robe off the Old One, revealing an emaciated body. Yellow, leathery skin clung to elongated bones.
    Juliet shuddered. “And to think I once wanted to join them.”
    It was the first piece of information she’d given me about the Old Ones. But we didn’t have time for more questions now. Black Robe had been about a foot taller than Juliet, so I had to cut more fabric from the bottom of the robe. But once the garment was on her and the hood pulled up, she was impossible to recognize. You almost couldn’t tell there was anyone inside the robe at all.
    Juliet stood and took a step. Immediately her

Similar Books

The Infinity Tattoo

Eliza McCullen

How We Learn

Benedict Carey

Bodyguard

Craig Summers

Black Box

Amos Oz