Birth of a Killer Read Online Free PDF

tightened. With his free hand, he tried to pull out the object that was stuck in his windpipe. But there was no strength in his fingers, and the flesh aroundhis neck was slippery with blood. His arm fell by his side. He opened his mouth and tried to say something, but only blood gurgled out.
    Still staring at Larten, Traz fell to his knees, swayed for a moment, then slumped. He lost hold of Vur, and the boy’s body rolled away from him.
    The silence in the room was more frightening than any bellow of Traz’s had ever been. The children were transfixed. Vur’s death had been unexpected, but it hardly counted as a cataclysmic event in this factory of misery. But the slaying of Traz had shaken their world to its core. Nothing could be the same after this.
    Larten licked his lips and began to lean forward. The hateful thing inside him wanted to retrieve the object from Traz’s throat and use it to stab out the dead foreman’s eyes. But as his fingers stretched out before him, he shuddered and blinked, then took a step backwards, shocked by what he had done and had been planning to do.
    Feeling sick and bewildered, Larten took a couple more steps away. As he was backing up, his gaze flickered from Traz to Vur, and realization of what he’d done struck him like a lightning bolt. He had killed a man. And not just any man, but Traz, the darling of the owners. Nobody in the neighborhood liked Traz, but he had been respected. Larten wouldhave to answer for the foreman’s death, and he knew what form that answer would take—a carefully knotted hangman’s noose.
    Larten didn’t try to appeal to the other children, to ask them to help him or to lie on his behalf. They owed him nothing. If they stood by his side or tried to hide his identity, they would suffer too.
    Turning wildly, fighting against a wave of bile, Larten searched desperately for the door—he had become disoriented and didn’t know where it was. As soon as he sighted it, he ran for his life.
    As if the children had been waiting for this signal, one of them raised a finger, pointed at the fleeing boy, and screeched, “
Murderer!
”
    Within seconds they were all screaming Larten’s name, pointing, howling like banshees. But they did nothing except scream. No one tried to follow him. There was no need. Others would take care of that. A full, fearsome mob of righteous executioners would soon be hot on Larten’s trail, each member of the pack eager to be the first to string up the cold-blooded, orange-haired killer.

Chapter Five
    Larten ran without any real sense of direction. He hadn’t explored much of the city beyond his own neighborhood, but he knew every last inch of the area around the factory, all the alleys, roads, ruins, and hiding places. If he had been thinking straight, he could have slipped away quickly and cleanly or found a spot where he could hide until night.
    But Larten was in a panic. His best friend had been murdered in front of him, and he’d killed a man in response. His heart was pounding, and he fell often, scraping his legs and hands. His head was a bedlam of noise and terror, his only clear thought—
Run!
    If a mob had formed swiftly, they would have found Larten flailing around the streets outside the factory, losing his way and backtracking, an easy target. But the adults who answered the calls of the children were thunderstruck. They pressed the witnesses for detailed descriptions of Traz’s last moments. If anyone had thought to give chase, others would have immediately joined them. But in the chaos, everyone assumed that a group was already in pursuit of the boy, so precious minutes passed without anybody making a move.
    Outside, Larten had turned down a dead-end alley. He was looking behind him for pursuers, so he ran into a wall and fell with a cry. As he picked himself up and rubbed his head, he spotted a girl no more than four or five, sitting on a step and studying him.
    “What are you doing?” she asked.
    Larten shook