Captive Spirit Read Online Free PDF

but its hateful yellow cat eyes fixed on the chain and necklace. It looked like it wanted to rip out Duncan’s throat, but it didn’t so much as raise a clawed hand to take action.
    Duncan lifted his good arm. His face was on fire. His head throbbed. His busted arm felt like it had swords sticking through the bone. He couldn’t see shit. Could barely hear anything except the gut-sickening sounds of animals in a feeding frenzy. With what little strength he still had, Duncan punched the tiger-thing right in its blood-streaked nose.
    The repelling force shoved him backward. He hit the concrete, and that’s when the real hallucinations started.
    As he rolled to his back, a bunch of women dressed in black leather bodysuits leaped over him.
    The women had swords.
    And daggers.
    And something that looked like a dart gun.
    One of them was on fire.
    Then everything was on fire in Duncan’s mind.
    I’m history .
    He thought the visions in leather were fighting off the cat-things. Lots of shouting. Lots of swearing. The stink of burned hair—or was it fur?
    “I think I got one.”
    “Shit, then get this one!”
    “At the river, Andy! The big one’s getting away.”
    “Move, Camille!”
    “Sorry. Sorry.”
    The earth shook. Wind howled over Duncan’s head.
    The sounds and burning and shaking and all the weird shit was moving away from him. He rolled over and puked, then used his good arm to drag himself toward John Cole.
    It took seconds. Then minutes.
    Outside the warehouse, water splashed like some freak-ass tidal wave had just come down the East River.
    Duncan reached Cole.
    He turned his head and puked again.
    The man was torn wide open. Guts everywhere. Limbs chewed. Not breathing. Eyes staring—yet blinking. Somehow blinking.
    “John?” Duncan’s question came out hoarse, nothing but a whisper.
    The brutalized, dying man managed to look Duncan right in the face.
    Everything faded away. The strange crap in Afghanistan. The years of no contact. The murders. All of it. In that instant, nothing in the universe mattered more to Duncan than helping his friend.
    He held his bad arm against his badge and that necklace and used his good hand to press against one of the wounds on John’s neck. “Don’t die. Hey. You hear me?”
    John made no response. Of course he didn’t. How could he? Logic warred with reality in Duncan’s brain, and his consciousness starting swirling and lurching.
    Then John blinked. Once. Twice.
    He was still alive.
    “Don’t you die.” Duncan’s messed-up perceptions heard the voice of a little boy from Georgia, a younger version of himself, calling out to this torn husk of a human being on the warehouse floor. Blood spread around them in a black, hot pool. Oozing. Not pumping. All the works were shutting down.
    Everything inside Duncan balled up like a fist as he focused his will and belief in miracles in that total way only little boys could achieve. “Damnit, John, stay with me. ”
    Sorry , John mouthed.
    Then his eyes widened, and he went still.
    The necklace under Duncan’s bad arm tingled.
    A blast of lightning hit him full force in the forehead, and he crashed backward. More pain. Agony now. His neck. His arm. His back. His heart.
    John’s knife vibrated, then seemed to melt away from his belt.
    Energy .
    Too much—
    What the hell was that?
    But it didn’t matter.
    Whatever was happening, maybe it would kill him, and maybe it should, because John Cole was dead. His friend was ripped open and bloodless, and those green eyes were empty now, forever.
    “John!”
    Did he yell that name?
    Duncan couldn’t be sure.
    He wished he could tear apart the warehouse with his bare hands, find those tiger-things, and start on them next.
    Rakshasa .
    The word blared through Duncan’s mind like somebody shouted it through a megaphone.
    Rakshasa. The Unrighteous. That’s what they are, Duncan. Murdering, evil demons called Rakshasa .
    A megaphone in his brain … speaking in the voice of John