Last Breath by Debra Dunbar Read Free Book Online Page A

typical branched out building with anchor stores, Old Town Mall was on a brick street that had been blocked off from vehicular traffic. Lining the broad walkway was a series of boarded up shops. Graffiti covered the brick and the plywood. Papers blew about the streets and down the narrow alleyways. I’d been in some rough sections of Baltimore, but this seemed worse. There was an abandoned, ghost-town feel to the area that the ’hoods on the west side lacked.
    It was dark. Seriously dark with no working street lights, the moonlight blocked by the abandon storefronts. I wanted to use magical light, not only to figure out which store was the one on my slip of paper, but so I didn’t trip over a loose brick and faceplant into the ground. I didn’t, though. I didn’t even pull the non-magical flashlight out of my bag. There was something about this place that demanded it remain in the dark.
    My footsteps were soft but they echoed against the pathway. Where were the dealers? The junkies? Where was anybody ? I’d expected shadows darting between buildings, or surely a hooded figure watching me from the curb. Instead I got the feeling that nothing alive remained here.
    Well, nothing human anyway. Something was watching me. I could feel eyes on me as I made my way down the empty streets. I didn’t get the static feel of vampires, but instead a coldness that ran deep through me to the bone, aching sharpest at the scar on my side. That ache was more nerve-wracking than the prospect of drug dealers and junkies with guns and knives.
    I finally pulled the flashlight from my purse and held it more as a weapon than for the light it gave off. Just in case, I had my sword in the other hand, at the ready as I walked. Sarge had said there was a revitalization project in the works, and the presence of a few bulldozers backed that up, but heavy equipment was as far as it went. Most of the buildings remained standing, and those that didn’t looked as though nature had done the demolition and not construction equipment.
    I repeated the building number under my breath, shining my light upward along doorways. Half the buildings didn’t have numbers, and given the chipped, peeling nature of the ones that did I wasn’t sure which one five-twenty-four was. Taking a guess, I approached one. The door had two-by-fours nailed in random angles across the frame. I tested the door itself with the butt of my flashlight and nearly had a heart attack when it swung inward.
    The light revealed nothing beyond dust and broken shelves as far as I could see, but I wanted to check further. Wedging myself between the two-by-fours, I squeezed through the tight space and into the old store. It looked to have been some sort of gallery. The front room was spacious with bent metal easels past the broken shelving. Electrical wires sprang from chipped plaster, above where paintings must have once hung.
    It took me a few seconds to realize that the energy inside the building was… normal. I still felt as if I were watched, but the chill was gone. Walking backward, I squeezed through the door and stood directly in front of the building. Then I edged the way I’d come down the sidewalk until I hit the point where my side ached and the cold ran through me once more. It was as if someone had drawn a line in the pavement that the cold energy could not cross. I took a few steps forward and again it vanished. I still felt watched, but I got the impression whoever it was couldn’t cross this invisible line, that they were waiting for the fence to come down so they could spring.
    I scraped my foot along the brick but saw no symbols. A magical circle worked both ways—as a method to keep energy and spirits contained within and to keep them out. There were many magical workings that were safer conducted inside a circle where stray energy couldn’t muck up the results. And, of course, there were times when a putting yourself into the cage of a circle kept the big and bad from