Blood Price (Dark Places Of The Earth 1) Read Online Free PDF

suspected Talena wished the same thing, but I didn’t want to ask. It was one of an increasingly long list of subjects I was reluctant to bring up for fear they might trigger another icy communication breakdown. We had had more than enough of those in the last six months.
   Talena was curled up in bed, asleep. Not so worried about me after all. Without pausing to wonder whether it was a good idea, I sat next to her and shook her shoulder. I wanted to tell her all about my adventure it while it was fresh in my mind. I was proud that I had done something bold and reckless and gotten away with it, that I had had an adventure. Maybe it was stupid macho bullshit, but it was the only stupid macho bullshit I had had for a long time, and I wanted to share it with her.
   “Huh?” she mumbled, eyes flickering open. “Wha? The – what is it? What time is it?”
   “You’re not going to believe what just happened,” I said.
   “What the fuck
time
is it?” She squinted at her watch. “It – Jesus Christ, it’s four in the fucking morning!”
   “Seriously. Listen. It was unbelievable. I was walking down this random street, I turned the corner, and I saw this Tamil family –”
   “Paul,
what the fuck?
I’m trying to sleep! Jesus fucking Christ! Do lives depend on you telling me this shit right now? Do they?”
   I hesitated. “No.”
   “Then shut the fuck up and let me sleep.” She rolled over, turning her back to me. “And turn the fucking light out.”
   After a moment I rose, deflated, and turned out the light.
   I stood in the darkness for a moment. Then I went back out into the common room. I knew I should try to get some sleep, we had an early bus ride to Mostar tomorrow, but I was still wide awake. I sat down in an uneven wooden chair and looked around like I had just noticed where I was. Which was how I felt. A strange and disturbing feeling. Like some kind of film had been peeled off my eyeballs and I was really seeing the things around me, in full vivid colour, for the first time in ages.
   Like the rest of the Pensione the common room was gray, low-ceilinged, undecorated, poorly lit, too small, encrusted with grease and dust, and smelled old and sour. Everything, walls and lights and furniture and bedding and plumbing, was old and faded and rickety and barely worked. I wished we had more money. I was twenty-nine years old now, Talena twenty-eight, and I didn’t associate squalid accomodations with desirable backpacker chic any more. I would have been happy to sacrifice gritty authenticity for comfort, but we couldn’t afford comfort. We couldn’t even afford the air fare that had brought us here. This holiday was entirely financed by MasterCard.
   I sat in one of the uneven wooden chairs. The troll-woman continued pretending that I didn’t exist. I felt itchy, physically dissatisfied. After a moment I realized to my surprise that I wanted a cigarette. I had never been a regular smoker, and I hadn’t had a cigarette in two years, not since starting to date Talena.
   What the hell. She would be angry if she found out, but that hardly mattered, these days she would find reasons to be angry with me if I morphed into the Angel Gabriel and started healing cancer patients. I got up, went downstairs, exited the Pansione, and headed for the 24-hour convenience store a few blocks west.
   It was dark out, only a few occasional street lights, and the street was utterly deserted, as if the city had been evacuated while my back was turned. A warm breeze drifted eastward. The streetcar rails in the middle of the street gleamed in the moonlight. As I walked I wondered how many people had died on this stretch of road during Sarajevo’s three-year siege. It was easy to imagine it, now that the streets were empty as a deserted movie set, easy to mentally superimpose bloodsoaked scenes of anguish, terror, and war. I didn’t have to imagine bullet marks, or bear-claw-shaped