Bitter Bite Read Online Free PDF Page A

by now.” Alaric’s voice turned menacing. “You’ve had years to watch
them grow up, haven’t you?”
    “You don’t look any different. Why don’t you look older? What the
hell are you?”
    “It doesn’t matter what I am,” Alaric said so coldly, Gideon
questioned whether he was really sure it was the man he’d met twice. The Alaric
he spoke to in church had seemed aloof, but not chilling, but then he
remembered the altercation in the alley. He frowned, listening to the other man
pleading frantically.
    “Don’t do this, please. I swear I didn’t mean to kill him. I was
young. We didn’t know what we were doing!”
    “You still don’t know what you’re doing. You’re an old man, and
you’re still cheating on your wife with male lovers, aren’t you? It’s forty
years too late for remorse, Stanley,” Alaric said softly. “You and your friends
really ought to have thought things through before you put a stake through
Edmund’s heart. He was my friend, and you killed him without a second thought,
as if he were the foulest of demons. He just wanted to be left alone.”
    “He attacked us!”
    Alaric laughed harshly. “He did nothing of the sort. You and your
idiotic group of boys got the wrong person, all those years ago. Edmund was a
man, not a monster.”
    The sounds of a scuffle and a groan of paralyzing fear told Gideon
bad things were happing at the far end of the alley.
    “Shit,” he breathed. He had to see what was going on, even if
Alaric spotted him. He eased his head forward slowly. When he glanced down the
street, he sucked in a harsh breath. Alaric had the other man pushed up against
the brick wall of the opposite building in an uncanny repeat of the previous
night’s brawl. The one I thought I’d
imagined. The older man’s feet and legs dangled like a disjointed
mannequin. He looked to be around sixty, if his grey hair was any indication.
Light from the street lamp behind the men silhouetted them so that Gideon
couldn’t make out the expression on Alaric’s face, but he could read the rage
in his stance.
    This can’t be real. No one could hold a grown man against a wall with one hand. He’d
put what he’d believed he’d seen last night out of his mind, but perhaps he had
been too hasty. He must have made some sound, because Alaric abruptly turned
his head and looked right at him.
    Gideon held his breath as all his muscles locked. He was in the shadows
while Alaric and the other man stood directly under a streetlight. There was no
way Alaric could see him, so long as he didn’t move. So long as he didn’t breathe .
    “Don’t do this,” the older man begged.
    Alaric’s blue eyes glittered as he turned back to his victim.
“It’s time, Stanley. You knew I’d find you eventually. I told you I would, all
those years ago. Remember?”
    “I’m sorry! I was young and stupid,” the old man said, voice
catching. “I didn’t mean to kill him.”
    Alaric nodded. “You were young, but not anymore.” He leaned in and
bit the man’s neck.
    Gideon’s blood ran cold as he stared at the impossible scene.
Alaric’s jaw moved in an obscene parody of a love bite. He seemed to be
drinking. The pose was vaguely sexual and Gideon swallowed hard against the
sudden stab of desire that shot through him.
    No, this is impossible, he thought faintly, unable to move. He wasn’t sure if he was more
disturbed by his arousal or Alaric’s violence, and it wasn’t until Alaric let
the old man’s body fall to the ground in an untidy clump of skewed limbs and
loose clothing that his mind managed to process what he’d just seen. He shakily
let out the breath he’d been holding and eased back against the wall as his
pulse pounded in his temples. He needed to get out of there, but he couldn’t get
his legs to move. He’d heard rumors of demons when he’d been in the seminary,
but he’d dismissed the stories. No one really believed that crap, or so he’d
thought. He closed his eyes and told