Eater of Lives(SPECTR #4) by Jordan L. Hawk Read Free Book Online Page A

complete and the full wendigo emerges, they grow
larger and more powerful with every life consumed. Let’s just say
they’re very hard to put down.”
    “Yeah.” Sean shivered. “Shit. We need to put
out an all-agency alert and get the media in on it. Ask for anyone
who’s seen anything suspicious to call in.”
    It would mean a mountain of work, chasing
down false leads and Goddess only knew what else, but right now
they didn’t have any other options. Most wendigo attacks occurred
in more northerly climes, but every graduate of the Academy learned
about the 1961 New York subway incident. A whole train left with
nothing but mangled, half-eaten corpses. Thirty dead, at least,
although the homeless population swore the wendigo took out a large
swath of their fellows before tearing its way through the roof of
the speeding subway.
    “I’ll call Kaniyar and get things in motion,”
John offered.
    “Thanks,” Sean said. “I’ll head back to my
office and start on the media release, so it can go out as soon as
possible. And let’s hope like hell this gets us somewhere, before
we end up with a massacre on our hands.”
    * * *
    That night, Caleb took out his paints for the
first time since he’d come to Charleston.
    Local TV stations had run SPECTR’s request
for any tips during the evening news, and Charleston PD, Homeland
Security, and every other agency in the low country were on alert.
Having done everything they could, John suggested they make an
early night of it, so he could read through one of Brimm’s books
which might hold the clue to exorcising Gray.
    He sat downstairs squinting at the scanned
pages on his tablet and making notes on pad of scratch paper
covered with esoteric symbols and scribbled translations of
medieval Latin. Will left to get drinks with Sean and some other
friends from his Charleston days, much to Caleb’s relief. Not to
suggest he thought John really wanted to get back with Will.
    He’d heaped most of his things in their
bedroom the night before. Grabbing his paints and a blank canvas,
he pondered for a moment where he should set up. The guest room had
the best lighting during the day, but that didn’t exactly matter
since night fell a few hours ago. The living room had pretty good
lighting, but he didn’t want to distract John.
    Their bedroom would have to do. The lighting
wasn’t great…but fuck, he could see in the dark now. Besides,
tonight wasn’t about making great art. It was about getting back
into things, doing something normal amidst all the chaos and
horror.
    Gray stirred restlessly. “We should be
out, searching for the demon.”
    Charleston is a big city. We could exhaust
ourselves looking for the damn thing and still come up with
nothing. Let John do this his way.
    Gray didn’t like it. The need to hunt
thrummed along their nerves. He had caught scent of the prey, and
knowing it still lurked out there irritated him constantly, like a
pebble in a shoe.
    Sand in swim trunks.
    “ That sounds…unpleasant.”
    Gray constantly tried to feed him memories,
so Caleb gleefully dredged up the time he’d hooked up with a guy at
Myrtle Beach, and they’d had sex in the middle of the night, under
a boardwalk. Or tried to have sex, given the painful places the
sand ended up…
    “ Can you please remember something
else?”
    Caleb grinned as he set up the canvas on its
stand and prepared his brushes. “Just be glad I’m circumcised.
Fewer places to get sand stuck, at least.” Then he realized he’d
spoken out loud to the voice in his head, and shut his mouth before
John came up to see what was going on.
    He spread some of the acrylic paints on a
palette. The colors seemed almost to glow in his enhanced
sight.
    “ Yes.”
    I swear you’re getting off on this.
    Hesitation, uncharacteristic of Gray. “There is such beauty…I did not understand before.” A jumble
of images followed, like something cut from an old black-and-white
TV reel, without weight or context.