My Black Beast by Randall P. Fitzgerald Read Free Book Online Page A

had looked at him. Was
he the problem? That stood to reason. This was a gated community
after all, not the sort of place that wanted strangers walking
around unattended. Though he was attended. Maybe it didn’t
matter.
    Marka looked at him with a stern face and
motioned with her head toward the side streets that ran through the
city. They were thin, not nearly able to let two people walk down
the alleys side-by-side. They were winding and Marka moved through
them quickly. She clearly knew her way around, but that seemed as
though it ought to be expected. Lowell kept up well enough but
regularly caught the edge of an arm or shin on the outcroppings
that the houses sent into the alleyway. They seemed to serve no
purpose other than to inhibit free movement. Occasionally they
would pass a patch of inscription in the wall, again in the style
of the tattoos and the door markings and all the rest. They were
magic and they were there for a reason. Lowell felt almost stupid
thinking that, but there wasn’t another explanation.
    The jagged, winding alley gave way to a thin,
clear street. There were doors here and windows, though it was not
as wide as the street they had left. It was in the middle of the
street when Marka again stopped abruptly. Lowell was ready this
time and watched her intently. She seemed to shudder from the
ground up and her eyes shot toward the direction the tower had been
when they had been on the hill at the door to this curious
world.
    He seemed to feel it before he heard it. A
wave of warm wind and a pressure that pulled him toward the ground.
Then the sound came. In any language, a siren. An alarm.
    Marka grabbed his hand and began to
run.
     
     

Chapter 6
     
    Lowell could hardly keep up as Marka pounded through the narrow alleyways. The outcroppings caught his
legs more than a few times, doing their best to hobble him, but the
girl didn’t care. Her eyes were locked forward, occasionally
shooting up to check the lines along the roofs. Lowell, for his
part, was given a chance to rub his shins a pair of times as they
crossed larger streets like the one before.
    The ruined houses with their curious statues
had been left behind now and the lots were more spacious and filled
with nicer houses. There were no people, though. Not a soul since
the woman who had been the cause of the hurry that was now tugging
Lowell toward some unknown place. He pondered where it might be as
they ran but none of the situations were particularly bright. The
best case Lowell could make for the fleeing was that they were
hurrying to some sort of place with people in charge of things to
tell them there was some crazy misunderstanding. The woman had
looked at him before she ran off. That’s never the best feeling and
the alarm only really drove home the idea that he was probably
going to be experimented on.
    He’d been lost from the start but now the
spire had disappeared behind taller houses and though the yards
were larger, each had an eight foot high wall wrapped around the
perimeter. As they flashed by the occasional gate when crossing
roads, he saw that the houses were ornate and covered with
intricate designs as everything seemed to be. These were a bit
different though. The designs were put on with care and in places
that were more aesthetically pleasing. They worked with the
contours of the buildings where the poorer area hadn’t seemed
bothered. The lines themselves were clean and expertly put into the
stone.
    There wasn’t much time to enjoy the work as
they took a sharp turn in a direction he told himself was away from
the center of the city proper. They had made several turns, though,
and he couldn’t say with any certainty. He thought about asking
Marka but she hadn’t taken a spare breath to make a sound since
they’d started moving. Lowell was beginning to hit the edge of his
admittedly pretty pitiful endurance. It hadn’t been so long, maybe
five minutes, but the work was exhausting and he was a