Read Online Hunting Karoly by Marie Treanor - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Marie Treanor
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the jumbled mixture of anger and guilt and desire, I could realize that everything I had sensed about him had been yesterday’s tracks. He must have feared me after all… He’d moved his lair, even if not so very far away, because I’d threatened him.
So did that mean last night had definitely been a dream? That he hadn’t come after all? Among all my confusion I was conscious of something perilously close to disappointment.
I caught sight of him again in the street that backed on to the church, vaulting the ridge of a warehouse roof, his damp kilt bunching heavily around his legs. I ran on, wondering about his sudden carelessness. The thickness of the clouds had obliterated the sun like an eclipse, but that wouldn’t last forever. Within the half hour, less probably, the sky would lighten to dingy gray and he would have to take cover again. But if he didn’t care about being seen leaping the rooftops now, in daylight, then he was probably preparing to move on. Which made him doubly dangerous. To Frank and Hilda and the whole population. To me. Today could be the day he killed me. Or I killed him.
Was that not what everything in the last two days had been leading up to? Some necessary act of contrition, of reparation for my sin of lust? To kill the only being who had ever seemed likely to fulfill my sexual desires, every secret, sensual dream…?
Lust is not so terrible a sin , said the devil on my left shoulder.
It is when it’s focused on an evil undead killer, said the angel on my right.
“Bugger off,” I said aloud to both of them, and paused before the warehouse, gazing up at the roof, trying to sense his presence. It was hard. I think he meant it to be, keeping high and away from anything I could touch or come into close contact with. Walking around the building, I wondered if I had lost him. For all I knew he could turn into a bat and fly to the airport.
Something drew me on to the next building, if only to try to sense more or less than before. More, I thought suddenly. My heart began to beat faster. The electric tingle in my body made all my nerve ends shiver. Though this was once another warehouse, it was a prettier building and had been converted into flats, some with little balconies more useful for flowerpots than sunbathing.
When I gazed up at the roof, I saw no one, but I felt him. I stood there for several moments, letting the rain run off my hair into my eyes, just feeling him. Feeling my own destiny.
Then I saw him, on one of the little third floor balconies, a shadowy figure in a wet, swirling kilt, pushing open the door into somebody’s home.
Aye, right, destiny. Sheer fury sent me prowling round the building, looking for a way in. I don’t know why his entering that house made me so angry. He must have done such things literally countless times before. It was the invasion , a crime I still half suspected him of committing at my mother’s house last night.
A rickety fire escape ran up the side of the building. Without further thought, I ran up it, two steps at a time until I arrived, panting, on the third floor landing. From there, it was easy to step over onto the first balcony, where I finally paused to draw breath and made the mistake of looking down on to the road. Immediately the old vertigo kicked in, the sudden dizzying sickness causing me to step hastily back toward the glass door into the flat.
A sudden flash of lightning turned my eyes away from the angry sky to the still figure who stood, suddenly illuminated, on the next balcony. In sodden red and blue tartan and a white, full sleeved shirt, his eyes gleamed yellow from shadowed pits in his thin, white face.
My heart jolted. I was conscious of a weird sort of tense triumph, as well as the inevitable fear, but it was only for an instant. By the time I blinked, the flash was over and he had already jumped onto the balcony beside me. Thunder crashed, for once not even making me jump. Water ran down his face, dripped from
So did that mean last night had definitely been a dream? That he hadn’t come after all? Among all my confusion I was conscious of something perilously close to disappointment.
I caught sight of him again in the street that backed on to the church, vaulting the ridge of a warehouse roof, his damp kilt bunching heavily around his legs. I ran on, wondering about his sudden carelessness. The thickness of the clouds had obliterated the sun like an eclipse, but that wouldn’t last forever. Within the half hour, less probably, the sky would lighten to dingy gray and he would have to take cover again. But if he didn’t care about being seen leaping the rooftops now, in daylight, then he was probably preparing to move on. Which made him doubly dangerous. To Frank and Hilda and the whole population. To me. Today could be the day he killed me. Or I killed him.
Was that not what everything in the last two days had been leading up to? Some necessary act of contrition, of reparation for my sin of lust? To kill the only being who had ever seemed likely to fulfill my sexual desires, every secret, sensual dream…?
Lust is not so terrible a sin , said the devil on my left shoulder.
It is when it’s focused on an evil undead killer, said the angel on my right.
“Bugger off,” I said aloud to both of them, and paused before the warehouse, gazing up at the roof, trying to sense his presence. It was hard. I think he meant it to be, keeping high and away from anything I could touch or come into close contact with. Walking around the building, I wondered if I had lost him. For all I knew he could turn into a bat and fly to the airport.
Something drew me on to the next building, if only to try to sense more or less than before. More, I thought suddenly. My heart began to beat faster. The electric tingle in my body made all my nerve ends shiver. Though this was once another warehouse, it was a prettier building and had been converted into flats, some with little balconies more useful for flowerpots than sunbathing.
When I gazed up at the roof, I saw no one, but I felt him. I stood there for several moments, letting the rain run off my hair into my eyes, just feeling him. Feeling my own destiny.
Then I saw him, on one of the little third floor balconies, a shadowy figure in a wet, swirling kilt, pushing open the door into somebody’s home.
Aye, right, destiny. Sheer fury sent me prowling round the building, looking for a way in. I don’t know why his entering that house made me so angry. He must have done such things literally countless times before. It was the invasion , a crime I still half suspected him of committing at my mother’s house last night.
A rickety fire escape ran up the side of the building. Without further thought, I ran up it, two steps at a time until I arrived, panting, on the third floor landing. From there, it was easy to step over onto the first balcony, where I finally paused to draw breath and made the mistake of looking down on to the road. Immediately the old vertigo kicked in, the sudden dizzying sickness causing me to step hastily back toward the glass door into the flat.
A sudden flash of lightning turned my eyes away from the angry sky to the still figure who stood, suddenly illuminated, on the next balcony. In sodden red and blue tartan and a white, full sleeved shirt, his eyes gleamed yellow from shadowed pits in his thin, white face.
My heart jolted. I was conscious of a weird sort of tense triumph, as well as the inevitable fear, but it was only for an instant. By the time I blinked, the flash was over and he had already jumped onto the balcony beside me. Thunder crashed, for once not even making me jump. Water ran down his face, dripped from
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