[Anita Blake Collection] - Strange Candy Read Online Free PDF Page B

everything in stark shadows and silver light. The footprints ended at the rocks. Adria touched a cold boulder and began to clamber over them. She slipped on a strand of seaweed and fell hard on one knee. The sharp pain forced her to lean against the damp rock and wait for the knee to move again. She could see over the rocks now, to the beach beyond. They were there.
    Rachel’s long blond hair was spilled out across the sand. He lay on top of her, his nude body made up of muscle, pale flesh, and shadows.
    Adria felt foolish, surprised, and relieved. She meant to turn away, to leave them to their privacy, but something stopped her. A wave curled up the beach and tugged Rachel’s hand up and down, loose, limp, unresisting. Adria watched for a few minutes, embarrassment swallowed up by fear. Rachel never moved, not a hand, not her head, not her leg. There was a limp quality to her as the man rode her that was more terrifying than any struggle.
    The man buried his face in the sand, baring Rachel’s face to the sky. The face was totally slack, nothing.
    Adria couldn’t breathe for a moment, couldn’t think. She screamed, “Rachel!”
    The man looked up, startled. Adria had an impression of dark eyes, impossibly large, a sculpted face. Beautiful was the word that flashed in her mind. She scrambled down the rocks, not sure what she would do if he didn’t run. Had to try. She was screaming as she came. Someone would hear; someone had to hear.
    He stood, and there was a tension to him. Adria stopped, panting, and stared at him across the sand, across Rachel’s body. She had seen a wolf once, while hiking in the mountains. It had turned startled eyes to her. There had been nothing human in its eyes. There was nothing human now.
    A light flashed on at the nearest house. He jumped, startled, and ran, not up the shore, but toward the sea. He ran into the surf, and it cut him across the waist and he dived between the waves, clean and neat, vanished. She watched his head surface and then his arms as he stroked for deeper water.
    Then he dived, and what splashed after him was the curving lines of a tail, like a whale, or a dolphin. He vanished under the waves.
    Adria stood there for a heartbeat. She couldn’t have seen it. Could she? Adria glanced back at Rachel. She lay unmoving, horribly still.
    Adria knelt in the wet sand. Her shaking hands couldn’t find a pulse. She pressed her ear to the chest and held her own breath. Adria had expected to hear a heartbeat. Even though she had thought death, she wasn’t prepared for silence. She pressed her cheek against Rachel’s slack mouth, nothing, no breath. “Oh, God, oh God.”
    A man’s voice called from the house where the light had flashed on. “Is everyone all right down there?”
    Adria couldn’t answer for a minute, couldn’t think, then she yelled, “Get an ambulance, and get the police. It’s an emergency! Hurry!”
    â€œI’ll call, don’t worry.” He rushed back inside.
    Tears threatened hot and close. “No!” She tilted Rachel’s head back, pinched off the nostrils, and began breathing for her. The chest rose and fell, four breaths, four rises. Adria stopped. “Breathe, Rachel, breathe.”
    Surf rushed in and tugged at her body. “Damn it, Rachel, damn it!” Adria breathed and then cupped her hands over the chest and pumped, counting, “One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand.” She crawled back to Rachel’s head and breathed. Then pumped the chest. “Rachel, breathe, damn it, breathe. Oh, God! Help me!” Tears choked her, trying to steal her own breath away. She couldn’t cry yet. Not yet!
    A man was there in his pajamas and bathrobe. He knelt in the wet sand. “I called the ambulance and the cops.”
    Adria looked at him. She couldn’t think what to say. “Help me.”
    â€œI’ll pump the heart, if