Ascension Read Online Free PDF Page B

on his back. 
    The knife rebounded from the man’s hand toward Laura.  The man reached out for it, but Logan had him pinned.
    “Laura?” Logan beckoned, extending one arm toward her.  “The knife, please?”
    Laura picked it up and handed it to him.  She didn’t like the grimy feel of the hilt, nor the dirt on the blade.  The knife had been used many times before, it seemed.
    “Thank you.  Now, then.”  Logan had one knee on the man’s chest, who was squirming ineffectively under the pressure.  Logan took the knife and brought it close to the man’s face, so the sun’s rays reflected off the blade into his eyes.  “I don’t want you threatening any more passersby like you did us, got it?” Logan began in a menacing tone.  “Do you have any more weapons on you?”  The man shook his head vigorously.  His eyes looked like they were about to pop out of their sockets.  “Good.  This is your only one?”  Without waiting for the man to answer, Logan lifted the knife high above him and thrust it at the man’s forehead.  Laura didn’t even have time to gasp.  The man cried out in fear.
    Logan’s extraordinary reflexes showed as the blade stopped just a hair’s breadth away from the man’s skin.  The man’s eyes rolled up so that only the whites showed, and he fainted.
    Logan stepped off him and grimaced.  “A loud mouth and no courage.  Men like him disgust me.”
    “You didn’t mean to kill him, did you?”
    “Out here?” Logan laughed.  “Absolutely not.  No matter what he might have done, killing in daylight is a surefire way to attract unwanted attention.  Besides, I don’t kill needlessly.  You know that.  Only… to feed.”
    “That’s what I thought,” Laura replied breathlessly.
    “We’ve got to figure out what to do with him,” Logan said, motioning toward the still body.  “We can’t just leave him here for anyone to find.”
    “Maybe we could make it look like he passed out from the sun?”
    “A good idea, actually,” Logan said.  “Come on, let’s move him back to his corner.”
    Laura helped Logan pick the man up and carry him back to where he was before.  Close up, he reeked of dirt and human sweat.  Despite what she was, the smells disgusted Laura.  She would not have taken his blood if he was the last human left alive and she hadn’t fed in years.
    They propped him up against a wall.  Laura looked around as they were doing so, and was relieved to see that still, there was nobody around.  Next, Logan returned to the spot where the short-lived fight had occurred and retrieved the man’s blade.
    “You’re not going to leave it with him, are you?” Laura asked.
    “If I don’t,” Logan said, “he will just find another one.  And what happened today won’t even make him think twice.  However…”  he took the blade between his fingers, and began to curl it onto itself.  Laura would have expected the metal to snap, but Logan did it with a natural dexterity.  It took him a few minutes, but in the end, the blade was warped beyond recognition.  Logan tossed it to the man’s side.  “Let him try to use that against somebody.  It’ll serve as a warning.  If he even so much as thinks as robbing someone again, he’ll remember what happened this time.  And how he was lucky I was feeling generous.”
    Laura smiled.  Logan had a fascinating way of thinking about things.  She didn’t know how much of a deterrent the blade would be, but she hoped Logan was right.  And she was proud of him at how he handled the situation.
    Logan winked at her as if he had read her thoughts.  “Come on.  If we don’t get out of the shadows, Alexander might think something happened to us.”
    They went back to the middle of the street, and sure enough, when Laura looked back, she spotted Alexander’s shape in the distance, much closer than he would have been if he wasn’t concerned.  She rose her arm to let him know that everything was okay, and he