Storykiller by Kelly Thompson Read Free Book Online Page A

really have a choice. What would you have done differently? He was going to kill you and your minions. And he killed your Advocate, the one who should have been your teacher. He left you no choice. Not to mention, I’m quite sure he was a serial killer of Mortals, not that I care about that ,” she added at the last moment.
    Tessa lowered her head and spoke more to herself than Snow. “Yes. There were women upstairs, a lot of them. But I, I don’t know. Maybe there was another way.”
    And at that moment Micah and Brand crashed into the room, Brand with Tessa’s abandoned bat, Micah, strangely, with a pair of wooden drumsticks, their faces ready for battle, or something. But when they saw Tessa covered in blood, the headless body, blood soaked carpet, and ashen head they cringed. Brand’s face had the look of someone who had just painfully swallowed a throat full of vomit, and Micah turned a sickly green. Tessa thought she might faint.
    “I killed Bluebeard,” Tessa said.
    Micah and Brand looked at Tessa blankly and asked in unison, “Who?”
    Tessa looked from Micah and Brand to Snow. Snow lifted her shoulders lightly as if resigned, a sad little shrug.
    “See?” Snow said.
     
 
     

     
    Tessa stared at Snow. “What do we do now?”
    Snow looked at a clock up on the wall. “They’ll be here any moment.”
    “Who?” Brand asked, still staring at the headless body.
    As if to answer his question, there was a snap of electricity and a hum, the hair on Tessa’s arms stood up, and a flash of bluish light illuminated the room. Tessa shielded her eyes against what best resembled a strike of blue lightning. When she could see again, there was another woman standing in the room with them—tall and beautiful, clad in luxurious dark brown leather from knee-high boots to a fitted motorcycle jacket. She wore thick leather gloves with steel fingertips that glinted in the light as she pushed a strand of hair from her face. A longbow made of rich brown wood was slung over her shoulder, and a quiver of arrows was strapped securely to her back. A mass of shiny golden-blonde hair, bound loosely in a thick braid, hung down her back. She was as impossibly beautiful as Snow, though different, her skin the color of a rosy peach, her eyes a much darker, stormier blue. Beside her stood a massive dog that Tessa at first assumed was the wolf that had saved her from Bluebeard’s fatal stroke. But this was not a wolf and it was smaller, which wasn’t saying much as its shoulder reached the woman’s hips. The dog’s fur was thick and deep black, its paws large and powerful. Its eyes glowed a steady orange-red that looked not unlike two tiny fires in its face. The woman and her dog stared at Bluebeard’s body, then looked to Snow. Although Tessa could not read her expression, it made her shudder.
    Brand spoke, perhaps on accident, from the corner of the room where he huddled with Micah. “Whoa.”
    The woman’s eyes snapped to Brand and Micah, and her expression was now clear displeasure.
    “Snow?” she asked, a warning tone in just that one word.
    “Tal.” Snow said, clipped, clearly not biting.
    “Devlo. What a mess,” Tal said flatly, the dog moving from her side to investigate Bluebeard’s body.
    “No kidding,” Snow said, “I told The Court we should have waited for you to return. This isn’t exactly my skill set.”
    “Clearly,” Tal said, taking stock of the room. “You’re in the Mortal world for half a day and we have a dead 300-year-old Story and mortal witnesses?”
    “And a murdered Advocate,” Snow added, nodding toward the foyer. Tal left the room and came back a moment later, the dog trotting at her side.
    “Tova,” Tal said in that same strange language that Tessa was sure she had never heard before. She watched Tal carefully. “Hecuba, search the house,” Tal said, nodding to the dog who took off.
    “And, of course, there’s that,” Snow said, gesturing disdainfully in Tessa’s general