Read Online The Dark Need by Stant Litore - Free Book Online

leaping, half stumbling over snow-covered roots. Running through trees in the dark. Only the thickness of snow beneath his borrowed boots kept him from cracking his foot against some outthrust rock, or worse. He wished furiously for his ax, but there was no time to go back for it. He’d relied on surprise, had seen his chance and taken it. And he’d missed. Likely Oslo wouldhave one hell of a bruise on the back of his head, likely he was a little dizzied by it. But he was on his feet and fleeing.
    And he would not get away.

    Hunter and hunted. Maybe that was how it would always be. Maybe that was who Matt Cahill was now. The one who hunted the hunters. The one who kept men and women safe in their meadow.
    Oslo sprinted out of the trees and onto the ice at the lake’s edge, sliding and catching himself on his hands, and then on across the ice, running along the shore. Out where only a fool would follow.
    After a moment’s hesitation, Matt tore after him. Ran out across the ice, the killer ahead of him a silhouette dark against the pale winter night. The man was fast. And it was all Matt could do to avoid sliding and falling onto his back, where he might lie winded and helpless. He clenched his teeth and poured on more speed.
    Oslo glanced back—again that chiseled, Viking face—and as he did, his left foot skewed to the side and he flipped over and down onto the ice with a crash. Even as he scrambled back up to his knees, Matt reached him. Seized his arm, slammed him down onto his back on the ice. One fist pulled back for a punch.
    Matt gasped.
    It was Adette’s face, gazing up at him.

11
    Adette.
    Her pale, almost translucent skin, the jacket torn half from her shoulders when Matt had wrenched at her arm, zipper tugged down, the soft swell of her breasts half bared to the cold. No bra.
    “Damn you,” Matt whispered, shaken. One side of her face was moving, squirming, the maggots alive and teeming just beneath her skin, as though her skin was a thin veil tossed onto boiling water. Even as Matt stared down at her, his hand numb with cold but still gripping her arm, her cheek tore open and a few of the white larvae wriggled out, moving over her skin.
    “I don’t think so,” Matt snarled, his chest clenched and hot. “That doesn’t work on me.”
    She smiled, though the smile didn’t touch her eyes. With those delicate fingers, she unzipped her jacket a little further, letting him see more of the roundness beneath. “Aren’t I fuckable, Matt?” she whispered.
    “Stop it.”
    “You were going to kill me. Kill me.” She frowned, pouting her lips. That, even more than the maggots, betrayed that this wasn’t her. Matt couldn’t imagine seeing that petulant, schoolgirl-fantasy expression in the real Adette’s face.
    “What’s the matter, Matt? What are you waiting for? You must have killed a girl before.”
    “Shut up,” he said. “Just shut up.” His stomach turning. He lifted Oslo from the ice, slammed him back down, the crack of his head against the ice. Adette’s face laughed, and suddenly her knee was in Matt’s gut, and the heel of her hand shoved against his chin, hard, and flipped Matt over. It was fast. His tailbone smacked into the ice and he cried out. The world went white with pain. After a moment, he saw the man who looked like Adette bending over him. Grinning.
    “You’re as much a killer as I. I can always tell.” Adette’s face melted, became one face after another, faces of those he’d killed, those who had rotted as he watched, those who had died beneath his ax or beneath a tire iron or beneath whatever was at hand. But always the maggots writhed beneath the skin. Matt breathed in through his mouth, avoiding the scent, gasping against the pain. Half-dazed, he still noticed things. Such as a bulge in the killer’s jacket pocket. Some object, the size of a cell phone.
    Except maybe it wasn’t a cell phone.
    The killer’s face was Andy’s again. “I see it in your eyes,” Oslo