Book 1 - The Silver spike Read Online Free PDF

clean up after himself again. I
thought about kicking him around the room. But I wasn’t mad
enough to try that yet.
    Even drunk and wasted away, he was still Raven, the baddest man
I’d ever met. I didn’t need to get into it with
him.
    He woke up so sudden I jumped. He used the wall to pull himself
up. He was pale and shaking and I never for a second took it for
the effect of the wine. That old boy was scared shitless.
    He couldn’t hardly stand up without that wall to help, and
he was probably seeing three of me and little blue men besides, but
he gobbled out, “Case, get your stuff together.”
    “What?”
    He was working his way along the wall toward his heap of stuff.
“Something just broke out of the
Barrowland . . . Oh, god!” He went down
on his knees, holding his stomach. He started puking. I handed him
water to cleanse his mouth and a rag to wipe up with. He
didn’t argue. “Something got out. Something as dark
as . . . ” Up came another load.
    I asked, “You sure it wasn’t just a nightmare? Or
maybe the grape boogies?”
    “It was real. It wasn’t the wine. I don’t know
how I know. I know. I saw it as clear as if I was there. There was
that beast everybody called Toadkiller Dog.” He talked slow,
trying not to slur. He slurred anyway. “Something was with
it. Something greater. Something of the true darkness.”
    I didn’t know what to say. He believed it even if I
didn’t. He had his mess cleaned and was starting to stuff his
things into a bag. He asked, “Where did you stable the
horses?”
    He was serious. Unable to navigate and brain-pickled, but he was
by-damned going to do something right now. “Thulda’s.
Why? Where you going?”
    “We got to get help.”
    “Help? We? You forgetting I got me a job here? I got
responsibilities. I can’t just mount up and ride off chasing
lights you seen in the swamp because you got aholt of some doctored
wine.”
    He got mad. I got mad right back. We yelled and screamed some.
He threw things because he wasn’t in good enough shape to run
me down. I stomped his wineskin to death and watched its blood
trickle across the floor. The landlady kicked the door in. She
weighed two hundred pounds and was as mean as a snake. “I
told you bastards I wasn’t going to put up with no more of
this. . . . ” We rushed her. She was a
liar and a cheat and a bully and she probably stole things from the
rooms when she thought she wouldn’t get caught. We threw her
down the stairs and stood around laughing like a couple of kid
vandals. She started screeching again down below. She wasn’t
hurt.
    I stopped laughing. She wasn’t hurt, but she might have
been. And I didn’t have the excuse of being drunk. “I
take it you’re headed out of town?”
    “Yeah.” The humor had fled him, too. His color was
ghastly.
    “How you going to get out of town? It’s the middle
of the night.”
    “Cash considerations. The magical key.” He
shouldered his bag. “You about ready?”
    “Yeah.” He knew I would come all the time.
    “Hey, Loo!” the gateman called into the gatehouse
while Raven clinked coins. “Get your ass up. We got us
another customer.” He grinned apologetically. “Loo,
he’s got a day job plucking chickens. Got too damned many
kids. You would think a guy would learn how to stop after the first
dozen. Not Loo.” He kept on grinning.
    “You’d figure,” I admitted. “This that
good a job? I don’t see so many guys happy with their work
like you.”
    “Pretty boring on the night watch, mostly. Been a
profitable night tonight, though.”
    “Others have gone before us?” Raven asked.
    “Only one guy. This old man about an hour ago. In such a
big damned hurry he just scattered coins all over the
place.”
    That was what you call your basic broad hint. Raven ignored it.
I made small talk till Loo turned out with the keys and opened the
small port through the big gate. Raven just stared straight ahead.
When Loo opened up he tossed