Read Online Kingdom of Shadows by Greg F. Gifune - Free Book Online

 
    “Do we?”  Rooster watches him, doing his best to keep his face void of emotion.  “Do any of you remember anything before the van?  Because I’m not sure I do.  I mean, I think I do, it feels like I do but…”
    “It’s in your head,” Starker says, “but you don’t actually remember  it.”
    “Yeah,” Snow agrees.  “What he said.”
    Rooster nods.
    “So I’m the only one who wants to leave then?”  Nauls paces about wildly.  “Really?  Are you guys fucking high?”  The light drifts back and forth across the dark room, cutting shadows and revealing quick glimpses of a long-dead house.  
    In that moment, eyes following the beam, fear wells in Rooster the likes of which he’s never known.  He’s sure he sees something more, something there yet not quite there, waiting in the darkness, slipping from sight like scuttling insects just as the light passes over them.  He grips his weapon tighter but it does little to calm his rising terror.  “We need to search this place.”
    “No we don’t.”  Nauls shakes his head.  “We can just leave.”  
    “We need to know what’s happening here.”
    “We can’t get upstairs,” Starker tells them.  “Staircase is blocked with shit and it’s all rotted out.  But there’s something dead up there and whoever killed it did some finger-painting with its blood.”  
    “There’s something wrong with this place, man, it’s—you guys all feel it too, I know you do.  Shit Starker you and Rooster felt it outside, and…I don’t…”  Nauls suddenly becomes strangely calm, his voice quiet and childlike.  “I don’t want to die out here.”
    “Easy, Nauls,” Landon says.  “Don’t wanna trip and fall on your vagina.”
    “Bring the light around to the door under the stairs,” Rooster tells him, his gaze moving between the horrified faces before him.  “We’re going down there.”
     
    *  *  *  *
     
    As daylight splintered night, it brought with it an icy rain that descended upon the city in violent torrents.  Shaking off the residue of nightmares, waking and otherwise, Rooster adjusted his position in the chair.  He’d placed it in front of the window and watched the street all night.  Every muscle in his body hurt, his neck was stiff and sore and his temples pulsed with a dull ache.  Ice ticked against the window, mixing with the sluicing rain to blur the glass and world beyond.  Numerous lost souls had come and gone throughout the night, hurrying through the darkness, but the priest had not returned.
    Though he couldn’t be certain, Rooster thought he’d briefly nodded off a few times during the night.  After asking him countless times to put the gun away and come to bed, Gaby finally gave up a little after midnight and drifted off to sleep.  She lay sprawled out across the bed, her breathing slow and deep.  He watched her a while.  She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.  It didn’t seem right, Rooster thought, for someone so intelligent, so caring and just, so uncorrupted and faithful to be associated in any way with such madness and horror.  Yet somehow it made perfect sense, a pure and tranquil soul like Gaby existing amidst the mayhem, calm beauty at the eye of an otherwise violent storm.  His storm.
    He sat on the bed next to her and gently caressed her face.  She stirred and moaned quietly but remained asleep.   Who are you ?  He wondered.   Why are you here with me?
    The pain in his temples drifted behind his eyes, lingering there as he gently kissed Gaby on the cheek.
    With the 9mm tucked into the back of his pants, he threw on his jacket, swallowed a handful of aspirin and slipped into a cold and unforgiving rain.
     
     
     
     
     
     

-8-
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Rooster found himself standing in the same rain some minutes later, having traced the address on the card to an old restaurant in a long-dead neighborhood.  A small dark hole-in-the-wall, it sat alone between a