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

said, in the voice of a man who’d been Matt’s friend. “How many, I wonder? You’ve taken all their lives. Men, women. Taken them all and turned their histories into melting clocks, then nothing. Nothing but dead flesh at your feet. And you know what the irony is?”
    Gasping for breath, trying to wall out the pain as he rolled half onto his side, Matt definitely couldn’t have cared less what the irony was.
    Andy’s face grinned. “The irony is you see so little. Me, I’ve ended lives. I drink them in, understanding fully what they are and who, what they’re capable of. Seeing all the faces they regret. You, on the other hand, you see only their last decay. You don’t see into the heart,do you? I take on that responsibility. I am a doctor, euthanizing the evil. You are only a butcher.”
    “Man, will you shut up.” The first shock of the pain was dulling. Clenching his teeth, Matt lunged, grabbed the killer’s jacket. “You don’t get to wear my friend’s face,” he gasped. And tore the object out of the killer’s pocket. In an instant, Andy’s face was gone, and Matt saw again those Scandinavian features. In his hand, Matt held a rudely made, stylized lion carved from stone, small enough to hold in his palm. An artifact from the desert. An artifact that changed faces. Oslo was staring at Matt’s face, his eyes wide.
    Matt didn’t know what horror out of his own past Oslo saw in his face, what mask of his own dead. He didn’t know who he looked like to Oslo, while he held that stone lion in his hand.
    But he had a pretty good idea what Oslo felt about whatever he was seeing.
    Oslo sprang away as though he’d touched a hot stove, crouched a yard away with his hand up. His mouth opened in a silent scream.
    “Guess your ghosts are worse than mine,” Matt said. He got to his feet, wincing. Stood there a moment until the pain was bearable and he could move again. Oslo’s eyes were round with terror, but he leapt at Matt with a shriek. His hands grasped Matt’s arm, wrenching Matt down and sending the stone lion skittering across the ice. That artifact that had lasted God knew how many centuries hit the water and vanished with a quiet plop. Gone.
    Oslo’s face went dark with fury, whatever nightmare he’d seen gone the moment that lion left Matt’s hand. Now he and Matt rolled, struggling, with the lake’s dark and hungry grasp only a few yards away. It was a quick, brutal fight, two men punching, digging in withtheir fingers, the killer’s teeth tearing into Matt’s hand, a yowl from Matt. Not a duel or a boxing match, just two men doing their best to damage each other.
    Matt went for broke and slammed his knee into the bastard’s groin. With a wheezing grunt, the killer curled up, and Matt pulled his hand free. Staggered to his feet. His eyes livid with fury, Oslo aimed a kick, tried to sweep Matt’s feet. Matt dodged, but the killer came after him, fast, bowling his body into Matt’s legs, grappling, knocking him down hard on the ice, a shock of fresh pain as his bruised tailbone hit, stealing away Matt’s breath. The ice creaking beneath him, the water dark and cold and far too close. The killer was on top of him, trying again to get his hands on Matt’s throat. Matt shouted and bucked, fought to flip him over again. Cold fingers closed over his windpipe. Blue-ice eyes right above his, eyes that belonged to no face but Oslo’s own, eyes that were hungry and fierce and without warmth.
    A blunt wooden club smacked hard into the killer’s temple. Oslo sprang away, gasping, one hand pressed to his head. Adette followed him, Matt’s ax in her right hand, the table leg still cuffed to her left wrist, one end splintered and broken where she had wrenched it free. She’d clubbed Oslo with it. Now she let the broken leg hang from her left hand, transferred Matt’s ax from her right to her left, and slid her knife free of its sheath at her hip, the eager sound of steel against leather. Her