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

crucifix knife flashed in the dark. She leapt, stabbing down, Buffy-like, at Oslo’s chest. Yet he ducked aside as smoothly as a bird veering in the air, grasped her wrist, wrenched her toward him.
    Matt surged to his feet.
    “Matt!”
    Adette threw the ax clumsily just before the killer drove his fist into her solar plexus, hurling her back onto the ice. For an instant the ax was in the air between ice and sky.
    Matt caught the haft, solid and heavy and reassuring in his hand. He spun on his feet, bringing the blade swinging toward the killer’s belly. His whole arm and his shoulder felt the impact.
    Richard Oslo’s eyes went wide. For a moment he just stared at Matt. Then glanced down. The head of the ax was buried in his intestines, his blood flowing black over the cold metal. Matt held the haft, panting. Richard’s face went white. Slow as a cedar falling, he crumpled to his knees. Blood poured between his fingers as he moved them feebly over the wound.
    He glanced up. That same madness in his eyes. “But you won’t even drink from me,” he rasped. “So pointless.”
    He fell to his side on the ice.
    Matt clenched his teeth and wrenched the ax free. The sound as sickening as the maggot-stench of the dying man. He stood staring down at Oslo, and suddenly he was tired. Bone tired. He let the ax fall from his hand. The ring of its blade against the ice, the dull thud of its haft. He watched Oslo bleed out, his blood like a pool of dark syrup on the ice. Oslo just clutched at his wound and curled up, his eyes round and desperate. After a moment, Matt bent and took up his ax again. Heard a soft noise from Adette behind him, perhaps a sob.
    With a grimace, he aimed for the throat. Swung the ax.
    And ended it.

    Adette crawled to her twin’s body on her hands and knees, dragging the table leg behind her. Took him in her arms, the blood from his throat pouring down his chest and over her hands. She kept whispering his name.
    Matt stood silently by, leaning on his ax, wishing he could sleep for a week. When he saw the shiver go through Adette’s whole body, heard the small, almost silent moan low in her throat, he sighed and straightened.
    “Adette.” His voice very soft. And very quiet.
    The soft hiss of her breath. She lowered her head to her dead twin’s throat, and her small tongue lapped at the wound, like a cat’s, licking up the blood dark like wine. The hair fell in clumps from the back of her head—though only Matt noticed—and her scalp cracked open in a long spine of sores running from the top of her head down her neck. Wriggling, hungry things squirmed out from the cracks in her skin. Worms, maggots, all the things that feed on the dead. One worm coiled about her ear like a piece of jewelry. The stench from her ripened.
    Yet he crouched beside her, a hand on her arm. “Bernadette, don’t. Please.”
    She shivered and glanced up. Her eyes were dilated. The rot was intense, like stumbling on a deer that had died in a ditch by the road and been left there for days. He refused to choke on the stench. He stayed there, gripping her arm, holding her gaze with his.
    “Adette.” His voice firm. “You don’t slide on the ice. Not today.”
    She gazed back at him for several beats of the heart. Then she drew in a shuddering breath and pulled away. Her lips dark with blood. She drew her sleeve over them. Her pupils shrank, became normal again. Her scalp was again covered in her thick blonde hair. The reek of her faded.
    The frozen lake, the woods. So silent.
    Then she scooted away from the contagion of Oslo’s corpse. She was shaking. Matt held out his hand to her, and after hesitating, she took it. Her fingers were small and cold in his. He gripped tightly, letting her know he was here.
    “You stopped me,” she said. “I was going to…”
    “He’s gone,” Matt said gently. “It’s over.”
    She blinked back tears, and it occurred to Matt that through all the emergencies, the passion, and the terror