Total pages in book: 163
Estimated words: 154735 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 619(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154735 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 619(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
* * *
Back down in Caldwell, in a cluttered, filthy storage room in the basement of the Victorian walk-up, Lash sat with his back against a rough stone wall, his legs stretched out before him and crossed at the ankles, the cold-and-clammy wrapping around him like a blanket just pulled out of a foul pond. With a hunting knife he’d stolen from that Dick’s Sporting Goods store, he whittled a broom handle that he’d broken free of its shaggy head. The shht, shht, shht was loud in the silence, a beat that played contrapunto to a leak in the far corner.
From time to time, a rat scampered across the dirt floor—or maybe it wasn’t dirt as in earthen, but layers of dust packed into a solid over concrete slabs you’d have to dig down to find. Either way, to his sensitive ears, the rodent’s padding of paws reminded him of dice rolling on a backgammon board.
There was one other sound.
When another groan hit the airwaves, he said without looking up, “Forget about him.”
“How the fuck is he still alive,” a male voice asked.
“That’s the point. He’s not.”
Lash glanced across the drafty darkness. His second and third inductees were sitting together on top of an old freezer that was a horizontal opener, their lower legs dangling at right angles, both sets of hands gripping the lip on either side of their knees as if they were about to get pushed off and prepared to fight the shove.
You already fell, Lash thought to himself as he resumed his even passes of the blade off the tip of the broom handle, little shavings flying free to join the loose pile by his thigh.
“So this is it? This is all we gonna do?”
Mr. Mouthy, who’d been the driver of the blacked-out Suburban, had had a rough time with the induction. Then again, his buddy had been the first to get his veins opened, so he’d gotten a gander at what was coming. To keep things tidy—a first in this basement, evidently—Lash had emptied the contents of their vascular systems in a claw-foot tub out in the hall. After that, he’d slit his own wrists and had them feed from him. This had been a new method of transmitting the essence of his father, but he’d felt as though he’d needed to make his mark on the process.
This was his time now, his turn to dictate how things were going to go.
After their hearts had circulated their new blood—after he had stood over them as they had writhed and retched—he had taken the cardiac muscles, burrowing his bare hands under each one’s sternum and pulling out the still-beating muscle.
The hearts were in the tub with the red blood. Enough with the stupid fucking jars.
“Yo, man, hello?” Mouthy demanded.
The Suburban’s driver, whose name didn’t matter, was getting grating. Lash had much preferred when the guy had been in too much pain to talk, but he had to remind himself: After facing an eternity in Dhunhd, he’d never expected to be back in his sire’s game. So this annoyance shit was a more-than-fair trade-off for—
Up above, the apartment building’s entry door opened and someone set foot in the shallow foyer.
As his acolytes looked up, he ignored their twitching nervousness. He’d learned something from that brunette with the pneumatic sex drive and all the clothes. Hiding in a parallel plane of existence was a good trick, and it was a damned shame he couldn’t pull it off to the extents she could. What he was able to do—and he’d learned this when the cops had searched everything earlier—was project an image of a-okay that disarmed the curious. It wasn’t as complete a cover as the demon whipped up, but it was enough to have things appear as if there was nothing going on.
Come to think of it, his Band-Aid over reality was similar to what he’d done to secure the SUV. That vehicle he’d coveted, which was now his, had been moved two blocks away and stored under a tarp.
The reality patch he’d pulled over the tub out in the hall and this room here with the three of them was just the same.
He glanced over at the oozing mess of the lesser on the floor in the corner.
Okay, fine. Three and a half.
The incompetent security guard, who’d been pumped full of lead out on the street, was still restless and ever-leaking, the movements of his arms and legs slow and unceasing, his suffering manifest. Lash could have just left him where he’d collapsed, but like with the inductions, he’d been compelled to be tidy about things, throwing the sack of undead down here with the rest of them. The stink was horrible, the moaning pitiful—
Lash lowered his knife and looked to the off-kilter door. As the pair on the freezer likewise came to attention, he flared his nostrils.