Read Online Hellhound (A Deadtown Novel) by Nancy Holzner - Free Book Online Page A

guys, they tackled him. Piled right on top of him. But he shook ’em off—all three—like a dog shaking off fleas.” Andy seemed to go inside himself as events unspooled in his mind. “I remember this part like it was happening in slow motion. The guys who’d tackled Tom were sprawled on their asses. Tom got up. He stood there, covered in blood, staring at the headless body at his feet. Still no sign of bloodlust. Then, all of a sudden, his head jerked up and he looked at the sky. The way he looked up, like he saw something that scared him, made me look, too. But I didn’t see nothing. Then Tom kinda groaned. He had his hands on his head, like this.” Andy made two fists and pressed them hard against his temples. “He dropped like someone had whacked his knees from behind with a baseball bat. He curled up into the whatchacallit—the fetal position—and started shaking. And then he just . . . blew up.” He blinked rapidly, like he was trying to clear the vision away.
    “Andy,” I said, “this is important. Before Tom clutched his head, did you notice any injuries appearing on his body?”
    “What, like my ankle? Nah. The accident didn’t touch him. Neither did the fellas taking him down.”
    “Not from those things. I’m talking about wounds that suddenly appear, chunks of flesh gouged out from no apparent cause.”
    “I didn’t see nothing like that.” His red eyes widened. “Oh, you mean like at the concert last winter? The one for . . . what was it called?”
    “Paranormal Appreciation Day.”
    That earned another snort. Not that I disagreed.
    “Yeah, that. I was working, so I didn’t go, but I heard about it. All those zombies that got killed . . .” His red eyes widened. “That was some kind of demon attack, wasn’t it?”
    “Sort of.” I didn’t need to go into the details of how the Morfran was the spirit that animated demons. The popular understanding was that demonic crows had attacked the concert. It was close enough.
    “In our previous interview, you told me you heard crows cawing,” Daniel prompted. “When precisely did you hear them?”
    “Right after Tom blew up. It was like
Blam!
And then this burst of cawing right away, like the noise had scared a flock somewhere. But you’re saying maybe it wasn’t crows. Not real ones.”
    “Maybe,” I said. “But maybe not.” From what Andy was telling us, Tom Malone’s death bore some of the hallmarks of a Morfran attack, but there were also significant differences. “The cawing you heard may have been exactly what you thought—some crows roosting nearby were startled by the sudden noise.”
    Andy’s expression showed his doubts. “I never would’ve admitted it an hour ago, but I guess I was lucky, huh? Them crows could’ve gone for me next.”
    I didn’t have any more questions, and I needed to process what we’d learned. I held out my hand, and Andy shook it. “Thank you for your help, Andy. I’ll get word to your wife.”
    “Like hell,” Foster muttered from the other side of the door. Damn. I’d forgotten he was there, listening in.
    Daniel shook Andy’s hand, too, and I knew he’d help me find Deb Skibinsky. Maybe he was thinking about how his girlfriend, Lynne, would feel if he didn’t come home some night. Maybe he was thinking of the families of the other zombies—God knew how many—stashed in this underground complex. Anyway, it was the least we could do, and Daniel knew it.

7
    WE LEFT ANDY SITTING ON HIS COT, CONTEMPLATING HOW close he’d come to being Morfran chow. If it was the Morfran.
    “Is there such a thing as coffee in this place?” I asked Daniel. He nodded and led the way to a cafeteria. Despite my hopes that we could ditch Foster, he followed.
    I poured steaming coffee into the biggest paper cup I could find and added a sleeve so it wouldn’t burn my hand. Daniel insisted on paying. “It’s on the department,” he said.
    “In that case . . .” Foster tried.
    “Use your own