Twenty Palaces by Harry Connolly Read Free Book Online Page B

street lamps.
    "What are you, undercover?" she asked. "What have you found out?"
    "The world is scarier than I thought."
    "Funny." Her tone suggested that she hadn't laughed in years. "He didn't give you a weapon?"
    "No, he didn't." I had no idea who "he" was, so my answer was an honest one.  
    "Where are the others?" she asked.
    "I don't know."
    "Jesus. He keeps you in the dark, doesn't he?"
    "Oh, I'm in the dark, all right. What is that..." I couldn't say creature or monster. Those words were ridiculous. I was afraid that, as soon as I said the word monster aloud, I would stop believing everything I'd just seen. "... that thing?"
    "Don't know. Don't care. It has a physical form now. Mostly. Let's just kill it and move on." We reached the fence. The trail of blood continued on the other side. The worm had gone over here.  
    The woman grabbed the bottom of the chain link and pulled up. The metal groaned and warped. When she was done, the fence was twisted enough to allow us to slip beneath it. The thing had gone over; I was going under.
    "Tell me what you found out so far," the woman said. "How many more were there like her?"
    That was a question I did not want to answer. Or was she testing me? She had seen me at the house earlier. She probably knew about Jon already, but not that Macy and Echo had apparently received the same cure.
    If you could call the thing in Echo's body a "cure."
    It didn't matter. I wasn't going to inform on my oldest friend, or anyone else. I was loyal.
    I still had to tell her something, though. I couldn't just lie, not without knowing how much she already knew. Hell, I still wasn't clear on what I "knew" myself.
    The stranger had already slipped under the warp in the fence. I followed, taking my time as I slid on my belly over the dirt. I considered saying that the mysterious, non-weapon-distributing "he" deserved to hear the information first, but I just didn't know enough about the situation. What if "he" was this woman's boss? Her ex-husband? Her--
    "Well?" she said. I had delayed too long.  
    A heavy piece of metal fell somewhere across the yard.
    "That way," she said. I went in the direction she indicated, creeping around a low brick building while she went the other way. I was glad for every step that put distance between us.
    The lights were now so far away that I couldn't tell if I was still following the trail of blood. I had to detour around a pile of something I couldn't make out in the dark. I laid my hand on it and immediately recognized a brake pad. They were auto parts. I didn't know for sure if the yard was still operating, but the rusty grime under my fingers suggested not.  
    I inched forward carefully, not wanting to trip and cut open my head on a lump of metal, and not wanting to run into either the strange woman or the... thing . The stolen blue ribbon had repelled the creature, but would it work a second time? Better not to gamble on it.  
    I couldn't hear the tattooed woman's footsteps anymore. I looked behind me; the parking lot was well lit and there were no silhouettes between it and me. Time to get the hell out of here.  
    There was a groan from up ahead. It was a man's voice, hoarse and trembling. I stupidly edged around a wrecked car toward the sound.  
    The old man lay on the asphalt, half-lit in a shaft of reflected light. My vision had adjusted well enough to make out his general form. He lay stretched out on his side, facing me, as though he'd tripped over one of the empty bottles by his feet.  
    I moved toward him. "Come on, dude. This is a bad place for you to be right now." God, he stank like a urinal, but I grabbed his arm and tried to lift him to his feet. With luck, I'd be able to get him back through the warp in the fence before I passed out from the stench.
    As the old man shifted position, the reflected street light fell on the thing clinging to the back of his tattered jacket.
    I grabbed the old guy's jacket and tore it off his shoulders. The huge