Witches: Wicked, Wild & Wonderful by Paula Guran Read Free Book Online Page A

eyes rested for a moment on her trembling hands.
    “ Eh bien, ” he sighed, “I believe you. So there is something about that devours souls—and mutilates bodies as well, since you mentioned a ‘Ripper’ persona?”
    She nodded.
    “Was the devouring before or after the mutilation?”
    “Before, I think—it’s not easy to judge.” She shivered in a way that had nothing to do with the cold.
    “And you came into this how?”
    “Whatever it is, it took the friend of a friend; I—happened to be there to see the body afterwards, and I knew immediately there was something wrong. When I unshielded and used the Sight—”
    “Bad.” He made it a statement.
    “Worse. I—I can’t describe what it felt like. There were still residual emotions, things left behind when—” Her jaw clenched. “Then when I started checking further I found out about the other five victims—that what I had discovered was no fluke. Andre, whatever it is, it has to be stopped.” She laughed again, but this time there was no humor in it. “After all, you could say stopping it is in my job description.”
    He nodded soberly. “And so you become involved. Well enough, if you must hunt this thing, so must I.” He became all business. “Tell me of the history. When, and where, and who does it take?”
    She bit her lip. “ ‘Where’—there’s no pattern. ‘Who’ seems to be mostly a matter of opportunity; the only clue is that the victims were always out on the street and entirely alone, there were no witnesses whatsoever, so the thing needs total privacy and apparently can’t strike wherever at will. And ‘when’—is moon-dark.”
    “Bad.” He shook his head. “I have no clue at the moment. The loup-garou I know, and others, but I know nothing that hunts beneath the dark moon.”
    She grimaced. “You think I do? That’s why I need your help; you’re sensitive enough to feel something out of the ordinary, and you can watch and hunt undetected. I can’t. And I’m not sure I want to go trolling for this thing alone—without knowing what it is, I could end up as a late-night snack for it. But if that’s what I have to do, I will.”
    Anger blazed up in his face like a cold fire. “You go hunting alone for this creature over my dead body!”
    “That’s a little redundant, isn’t it?” Her smile was weak, but genuine again.
    “Pah!” he dismissed her attempt at humor with a wave of his hand. “Tomorrow is the first night of moon-dark; I shall go a-hunting. You remain at home, else I shall be most wroth with you. I know where to find you, should I learn anything of note.”
    “You ought to—” Diana began, but she spoke to the empty air.
    The next night was warmer, and Diana had gone to bed with her windows open to drive out some of the stale odors the long winter had left in her apartment. Not that the air of New York City was exactly fresh, but it was better than what the heating system kept recycling through the building. She didn’t particularly like leaving her defenses open while she slept, but the lingering memory of Katy Rourk’s fish wafting through the halls as she came in from shopping had decided her. Better exhaust fumes than burned haddock.
    She hadn’t had an easy time falling asleep, and when she finally managed to do so, tossed restlessly, her dreams uneasy and readily broken—
    —as by the sound of someone in the room.
    Before the intruder crossed even half the distance between the window and her bed, she was wide awake, and moving. She threw herself out of bed, somersaulted across her bedroom, and wound up crouched beside the door, one hand on the light switch, the other holding a polished dagger she’d taken from beneath her pillow. As the lights came on, she saw Andre standing in the center of the bedroom, blinking in surprise, wearing a sheepish grin.
    Relief made her knees go weak. “Andre, you idiot!” She tried to control her tone, but her voice was shrill and cracked a little.