The Grip by Griffin Hayes Read Free Book Online Page B

Lysander watched with morbid fascination, utterly perplexed by the display. The thin man rolled up his sleeves and brought the blade to his wrists. He began sawing viciously. A stream of blood gushed out and the man screamed, but the sound was not one of pain, but one of orgasm. He moved to his other wrist. The top button of his shirt was undone. He reached up with both bloody hands and ripped six buttons off so that his shirt flapped open. With the edge of the knife, he carved something into his chest, something Lysander couldn’t quite make out.
    The floor at his feet was now slick with blood. He shuffled over to the table, careful not to slip on any of it and reached for a strange-looking bust. Lifting it in the air, he paused for a moment, admiring it, and then brought it arcing down onto his own face, crushing the bridge of his nose, releasing a fan of blood and bone. The bust rose and fell, again and again, until there was nothing recognizable of the man left. A stranger was destroying himself before Lysander’s very eyes. He was utterly disgusted by the spectacle before him. But Lysander couldn’t turn away.
    There was a crater now where the man’s forehead once was. Shrieking, the man staggered and then collapsed to his knees. It was finally over, Lysander hoped, but he was wrong. The thin man’s fingers crawled up his face to where he could look at them and plunged them into the soft tissue between his eyeball and what remained of his nose. There was a sound like boiled eggs being plucked from their shell. He pulled his hands free and Lysander could see he was holding something in each hand. They were jiggling in his grasp. He had plucked out his own eyes, Lysander realized with horror. Dangling down the man’s blood-stained forearms like sinewy bits of rope were his optic nerves. At last, he collapsed and lay still.
    Lysander suddenly felt an intense chill grip him. A gray mist began forming on the floor. The ghost, the creature, whatever the hell it was, was leaving the thin man’s corpse and moving purposely toward the other form lying prostrate on the floor. They united and the fingers of the shadow’s left hand began to do a subtle dance. The movement went up to his arm, then to his head. He propped himself up on his shoulder, admiring his work. Suddenly, the shadow’s head snapped in Lysander’s direction. His head perked up and for a moment it seemed as though he was sniffing the air. Sniffing for a scent he had found floating past him in the breeze.
    Invisible icy tentacles began snaking out, probing blindly like something used to dark and damp places.
    Lysander began to back away, but the tentacles were closing in.
    Just then he felt another presence, a sound. He tried listening in spite of his gnawing fear. It sounded like a wolf, snarling low, vicious and threatening.
    The tentacles approached and the growling turned to vicious snapping. Lysander swore he could hear the sound of jaws clamping shut, gnashing at dead air.
    Someone was calling his name. Lysander… Lysander… Lysander. Sudden movement. Then blackness and pain. The pain racked his whole body with such intensity he couldn’t remember when he ever felt anything so real. His eyes opened to a dim room. Dim was good. Anything was better than orange. Later he would remember only flashes.
    Samantha was above him, talking to him softly.
    Malice available for Kindle, Nook, Kobo, Sony, Apple.
    To contact Griffin Hayes or to read samples of his other work, visit his blog:
    http://griffin-hayes.blogspot.com/

An excerpt from Bird of Prey by Griffin Hayes.
    T ommy ‘the tank’ Hodgkins skidded his Firebird into Lucky Lonie’s parking lot going about twenty miles faster than he really should have been. The Bird’s tires locked in a high c before they kicked up a thick rubbery cloud of smoke.
    Buck Sanders was pacing out in front of Lonie’s, oblivious to the fact that Tommy nearly sent him careening over the hood, off the windshield and into