Hunter of the Dead by Stephen Kozeniewski Read Free Book Online Page B

fabricated out of his shirt and the squeegee. From the speed that the whole mess burst into flames, Nico realized he must have dipped it into the pool of gasoline.
    “Oh, fuck,” he whispered under his breath.
    Price flung the torch in a spinning arc through the air and turned to run toward the car faster than any man his age should have been able. Nico’s knuckles turned white gripping the wheel, and he was certain his heart stopped for the entire duration of the torch’s arc through the air.
    The Damned took just a second too long to realize what was happening. If it was a vampire as Price had claimed – and at this point, Nico found the assertion difficulty to dispute – perhaps it came from a time when gas stations didn’t exist. All the same, it seemed to realize its danger and turned to flee, but not before the torch struck the ground and a conflagration erupted through the night.
    Nico felt himself being shoved aside as Carter hopped into the car and slammed on the gas. The Caddie practically burned rubber as it peeled out, and Nico looked over his shoulder to see a literal mushroom cloud engulf the Fill-Up as the underground gas reservoirs caught fire.
    “Oh, shit!” Nico cried out.
    “What is it?” Price panted, throwing his head over his shoulder to see what Nico was oh-shitting about.
    A flaming silhouette was soaring into the night sky over the devastated convenience store.
    “V…vampires can fly, can’t they?” Nico whispered.
    Price slammed on the brakes and as he nearly smashed his head into the dash Nico wished he had buckled up. The fiery figure traced a parabola through the night sky, in the opposite direction of where they were driving. It disappeared noiselessly, and Nico realized it had splashed into the nearby Cheyenne Peaking Basin. The lake was black and invisible in the night.
    “No,” Price said, “But they can sure jump.”

 
     
    Three
     
     
    A few days before…
    Rivulets of blood dripped from every corner of the violet-tinged world. Great cigarette burns appeared and disappeared all across her field of vision, blossoming and fading with the regularity of the tides, but in no discernible pattern.
    And the soundtrack of the stereoscopic kaleidoscope from Hell was the beating of the awful drums. Louder and deeper and faster than even a jackhammer on the streets of Guangzhou, the sound seemed to emanate from between her ears.
    Layered over it all was the incapacitating, overwhelming, gnawing hunger. She felt as though her stomach was trying to claw its way out of her torso. She was scarcely aware of her own body.
    She was only vaguely aware of the voice and occasional face of Topan entering and leaving her vision, and pressing hard on her hand, and sometimes slapping her cheeks but doing little to rouse her from the deep reverie of agony.
    Then one word, repeated over and over, gradually worming its way into her consciousness.
    “Eat…eat…”
    Topan’s visage filled the full field of her vision.
    “Eat!”
    Some thick lump of flesh was under her nose. Unthinking, she bit into it, crunching through gristle, bone, and sinew with ease. She greedily gobbled down the first mouthful of meat, barely stopping to chew, then took another bite, and another.
    The throbbing subsided. The drums receded. The purplish tinge to the world around her began to fade. And she found herself sitting in a chair in her sitting room, holding a severed human forearm in her hand.
    Startled, she dropped it. The mangled mess of an arm clattered to the table and rolled once before settling against the centerpiece. Before she had gnawed through it in her blood-drunk rage, it had belonged to the person whose sprawled out body was arranged on the table like a feast. Bound and subdued, he was now scarcely even breathing, as the life leaked out of him from the arteries of his severed arm.
    Her father.
    She only became aware of the pained moaning as the horrible drumming faded from her ears. Her father’s