Howler's Night by RS Black Read Free Book Online

die before I let it happen.
    “You misunderstand me, Priest. I don’t give a rat’s ass if she ever deciphers your book. That’s between you and the girl—I don’t deal in love .” He said the word like it offended him. “What I speak of is something far different.”
    Narrowing my eyes, I took a sip from my refilled glass. It was impossible for me to get smashed, but I could get buzzed just enough to loosen my tongue. I didn’t think that was on Death’s agenda for me, and it seemed like the scythe wielder knew more about chess than I did.
    I chuckled and took another sip. “I’m not begging for it, Death. Either tell me or stop wasting my time.”
    “Call me Dean.” He tapped my glass with his.
    At my blank stare, he shrugged. “What?”
    “Nothing.” I swallowed the last of the Jack and then covered the glass with my hand when he attempted to pour more. “You’re just very humanized for a being that traditionally does the cowl and sickle shtick.”
    “Shtick.” He snorted. “Okay. I could say the same to you, death priest. Don’t you know you’re supposed to decapitate what’s back there, not bump fuzzies with it?”
    I shook my head, giving him a hard glare.
    “Anyway.” He waved his hand. “The book I’m referring to is the one Pandora wrote while in captivity.”
    “What?” I sat straight up. How did he know that? I could feel the anger trying to ride me again.
    “No.” He rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t in there, I didn’t actually see her do it.”
    I licked my front teeth. “Then how do you know—”
    “She did it? I sent Hannah there to make sure she got it.”
    “What the hell are you talking about?” I rubbed the bridge of my nose with my thumb, because if he was saying what I thought he was saying, then he’d deliberately sent someone to—
    “Creatus, that’s the name of where she was held.”
    “You reading my mind?”
    He pinched his fingers together. “Maybe just a little.”
    “Don’t.”
    He shrugged in a way I was pretty sure didn’t mean he was sorry.
    “So what the hell is that place and how do you know about it?”
    He sighed and swallowed his drink, then poured another before tipping the bottle toward me. “You sure?”
    I shook my head.
    “Suit yourself. I know about it just like I know about everything else. I’m more than just Death, I’m a Fate. That means I read the lines of life. It’s how I know when one’s ready to end. It also means”—he inclined his head toward the back room—“I can read the future.”
    “So you know how this ends?”
    “Not really. Reading the future doesn’t mean shit. In fact, I hate dealing in what hasn’t happened because there are so many variables to take into account. For instance, I see your death in one. I see hers too, but in another I see you and her remaining partners in crime for many millennia more. Then there’s a third one where she...” He made a cutting motion across his throat and grinned. “Like I said, a million different factors. Only as the threads converge and the time draws nigh for the future to become the present can I make an absolute determination on how things will go.”
    “Makes sense. But you haven’t answered my question.”
    He shrugged. “Creatus is the Triad’s den of inequity. It’s where they take those things they deem significant. The one they have here in the Catskills ain’t their only one either. That network is extensive and vast, and woe to any caught in that spiderweb.”
    I knew they wanted Pandora—Grace had as much as told us that already. I shrugged. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
    “Okay, she’s the first one to ever walk out of there alive.”
    “Wait.” I held up my hand. “You sent someone in after her?”
    “Hannah. Level ten witch, yeah.” He scratched his jaw. “She had to be powerful enough to attract their attention. She was good people.”
    My eyes narrowed as my blood ran cold. I was a killer; death didn’t turn me squeamish,