Read Online Dark Light by Randy Wayne White - Free Book Online

in the Curtain claimed that men were being kidnapped off the streets by aliens. Fortunately, the mainstream media ignored the reports.”
    â€œYou have to admit it’s hard to take that kind of tabloid nonsense seriously,” Cooper said.
    â€œI did a little checking. Sierra’s reporting was accurate, at least up to a point. Nearly a dozen ex-hunters, maybe more, have vanished in the past six months. They were all juice heads living in alleys or in abandoned buildings in the Quarter. Not the kind of upstanding citizens who get noticed when they disappear.”
    â€œThey sure as hell weren’t kidnapped by aliens,” Cooper said.
    â€œNo, but something happened to them. They’re my men now. I’m responsible for them.”
    â€œUnderstood.” Cooper was quiet for a moment. “You really think Sierra McIntyre can help you find out what’s going on over there in Crystal?”
    â€œShe’s getting her information from somewhere. I’m pretty sure that she’s got contacts on the streets that I don’t have. And there’s something else.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œShe’s just about the only person besides Ray that I can trust here in Crystal at the moment.”
    Ray Takashima was one of them, another former Bureau employee. The bonds between all of them had been forged in ghost fire and would never be broken.
    â€œYou and Ray always made a good team,” Cooper said. “But if I were you, I’d keep a close eye on your new bride. You don’t really know that much about her. Sounds like getting the scoop and bashing the Guild are her top priorities, not playing Guild wife.”
    â€œIf I thought I could convince her to walk away from the story, I would. But she’s sunk her teeth into it, and I can tell she’s not the type to let go. My only other option is to try to protect her by throwing the mantle of the Chamber around her.”
    â€œSounds like a solid foundation for a marriage, if ever there was one,” Cooper said. “Can’t wait to see the cover of tomorrow’s edition of the Curtain . Don’t forget the ring.”

Chapter 5
    THE UNNERVING WHISPER OF ENERGY FEATHERED THE FINE hair on the nape of Sierra’s neck the moment she parked her battered little Float at the curb. The fog had lightened somewhat in the afternoon, but the Quarter was still wrapped in a ragged gray blanket. She could see only as far as the intersection.
    She got out cautiously, Elvis perched on her shoulder. He muttered a little.
    â€œYou sense it, too, don’t you?” she asked softly.
    Elvis seemed alert but not unduly alarmed. His calm response reassured her. If there had been an imminent threat, he would no longer look like something that had come out of the inside of a vacuum cleaner. He would be sleeked out in full battle-ready mode, his second set of eyes, the ones he used for hunting, wide open.
    She stood on the curb for a moment, surveying the narrow street. There was the usual ambient alien psi that permeated the Quarter, but it was a pleasant, lightly stimulating sensation. That wasn’t what was ruffling her intuitive senses. What she was experiencing was the same sensation that had made it impossible to sleep last night; the creepy feeling that she was being observed from the shadows.
    She looked around but saw nothing out of the ordinary. By day Jade Street was always imbued with a slightly seedy, down-at-the-heels atmosphere. The impression was magnified this afternoon because of the ominous gloom of the relentless fog. Nevertheless, this was not a dangerous section of the Quarter.
    The two-hundred-year-old Colonial-era buildings that loomed on either side housed a mix of what the newspaper ads like to call “affordable” apartments, such as the one she lived in, a number of low-end antiquities shops that specialized in alien and First Generation relics, a convenience store, and a tavern called the