A Song In The Dark Read Online Free PDF

and aware long after a normal man would have found merciful release in death.
    I could almost smell my own blood again. I flexed my hands, but they were quite clean and whole, not the skeletal claws I’d used to drag myself across the slick concrete floor to . . .
    Bracing inside, I waited for the wave of nausea, for the shakes to return. Now would be the worst, the absolute worst time, for them to hit, so of course they would. There’d be no sympathy from this bunch. They’d see my real face, learn firsthand what Bristow’s knife work had done to me. . . .
    â€œWhat’s the matter?” Kroun gave me a narrow look. “You sick?”
    â€œNot much.”
    I breathed in warm air that smelled of booze, stale smoke, sweating bodies, bay rum aftershave . . . and blood. Not a ghost scent from my imaginings, nor the fresh stuff of a flowing wound, but the muted kind that lurked beneath the skin. It was always present, but I wasn’t always aware, like the way you ignore traffic noise. For a few deep and profound seconds it struck me that every one of the tough guys crowding this room, the muscle, the sharps, the thieves, the killers, from Strome to the boss in charge, were all little more than walking bags of blood. I could feed myself sick on any of them. They had no way to expect it, no way to stop me if I made up my mind to do it.
    Even the biggest, deadliest, meat-eating predator was my food.
    So it had proved at the end when I’d killed Bristow.
    I held on to that most interesting thought, sat a little straighter, and slowly breathed out again.
    Well. How about that? Not one hint of tremor in my whole body. Skating so close to the memory should have had me doubled over and whimpering again, but it was like a switch had been flipped, and I was in control.
    For how long I couldn’t say.
    Kroun still watched me, hardly blinking. “He doesn’t look like he’s got so much as a stubbed toe.”
    â€œHe was hurt bad, Mr. Kroun,” Strome continued. “Derner saw, too.”
    â€œI’m a fast healer,” I said.
    â€œConvenient,” said Kroun. “What’d you do to get Hog Bristow pissed enough to go buckwheats?”
    â€œBeing stand-up for Gordy. Hog jumped things when he shot him out of hand like he did. I stepped in. Hog didn’t like it much.”
    â€œWhat’d you think to get out of it by helping Gordy?”
    â€œI wasn’t thinking to get anything. I stepped in because that’s what you do for friends.”
    â€œYou had a two-grand hit out on Hog.”
    â€œNot a hit. That was a reward for finding him, nothing more. If you’ll recall, I told you several times over the phone I wanted to keep Hog alive. I knew what kind of trouble it would make if he got killed. But at the end he didn’t give me any choice.”
    Kroun’s brown eyes were odd in this light, hard to look at, with strangely dilated pupils like holes into hell. He must have known their effect and used it plenty. “And that may just be something you came up with to cover yourself with me.”
    â€œYou talked to Derner? Then you know it’s what happened.”
    â€œDoesn’t matter. Someone has to pay for killing Bristow. You’re it.”
    Still behind me, Mitchell shifted, and I felt something pressing cold against my skull. I turned only enough to confirm it was a gun muzzle. One trigger pull and my brains would be all over Gordy’s rug.
    I nodded. “No problem.”
    â€œWhat?” Must have been a disappointment to Mitchell, me not being terrified. I just didn’t give a damn. After surviving Hog Bristow there was little that could scare me these nights. Just myself.
    My reply was to Kroun, not the hired help. “I know the rules.”
    Kroun watched me closely. I still had that strange serenity gripping me. He was food. Walking, talking food.
    I smiled at him.
    â€œYou think I