Black Frost Read Online Free PDF Page B

stick’s point dug in an inch, hardly a
telling blow, but the effect was spectacular. The wound sizzled and
sputtered like bacon fat on a hot griddle. The four-foot tall thing reacted like I had branded it with a red-hot iron, its
back arching in a sudden spasm of agony, its head throwing back and
screaming the most God-awful screech I’d ever heard. Like the
pterodactyl sound from an old dinosaur movie.
    It spun, knocking my stick from my hand, its
baleful yellow reptile eyes burning with insane rage. I stumbled
backward in an involuntary attempt to put distance between myself
and it, my hand fumbling at the hilt of my utility knife.
    I make my sheaths from kydex, a thermoplastic
that holds the blade by tension rather than snaps or straps. That’s
what saved me. That and my dog.
    The squatty monster leapt at me, covering the
eight feet between us in a blur. The claw tipped arm that was
headed for my throat suddenly sprouted sixty pounds of pitbull and
then the meaty body slammed into me, but more importantly, into the
blade of my knife. Four inches of tempered tool steel was buried in
its sternum, sizzling like a welding torch. It jerked its entire
body like a defibrillator had just hit it, the spasm throwing it
ten feet away, taking my knife with it and throwing Charm to one
side like a doll. There it shook and shuddered, the wound around
the knife smoking as it shredded the moss in its death throes.
    Remembering the man and the other two demon
creatures I turned in time to see him split one from stumpy neck to
opposite hip, his strange black blade sliding through it like it
was made of smoke.
    The remaining creature bounded backward,
covering twenty feet in an eyeblink. It spun and ran, a green blur.
The man in black spared me a glance, nodded when he saw I was alive
and then raced after the creature, moving just about as fast.
    Shocked, I sat on my ass, staring at the
creature that had finally stopped jerking and thrashing. The soggy
moss soaked into the seat of my pants, the ice cold water snapping
me back to the here and now.
    Standing up, I retrieved my staff and checked
Charm over, all while keeping an eye on the two bodies on the
ground.
    Up close details became clearer. The green
hued skin was slightly scaled, like reptile skin, but the build was
more like a malformed chimpanzee. The head was overlarge, fitted as
it was with extra wide jaws. Big open nostrils, large eyes and
bat-like ears took up the rest of its face.
    The flesh around my knife was still smoking
and started to spark little green motes of light that drifted up
like tiny fireflies. Charm barked once, startled by the body’s
change. I glanced at the one that had been cut in half by the man’s
blade, it too was smoking and spitting green lights.
    Belatedly, I remembered my camera and fumbled
it out of the parka pocket. I set it to video rather than still
photos, trying to capture the changes the bodies were rapidly going
through. By now, I could see the one with my blade in its chest was
deflating, like an air mattress with a rapid leak. Bluish fluid
(blood?) oozed around the wound as the little dots of green light
whisked up into the air, faster and faster. Both bodies were
burbling and melting into the moss. The bisected body was liberally
covered with the blue goo that I believed the things used for
blood, and that body was disintegrating faster than the thing I’d
killed.
    My head swiveled around, watching first one
body, then the next, then scanning the surrounding woods for more
of the creatures. Charm was still extremely agitated, but she was
paying attention to the melting corpses rather than the woods, a
behavior that lent me some comfort. I was sure my little dog would
sense the presence of anything hostile.
    The green flesh was mostly gone now, and the
dark gray skeletons underneath were starting to erode as well. The
camera shook in my hands as I tried to document the bizarre scene
in front of me.
    When nothing was left but wet, gooey