Dark City (The Order of Shadows Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

effective, considering...."
    "Did you get pictures?"
    Haskins pulled out his phone and smeared the display with his greasy thumb as he flicked through it. His face wore a sickly look as he turned the screen my way.
    A man, in his late sixties, lay neatly upon polished floorboards with his arms folded diagonally across his chest. A red slash marked his throat and blood pooled around his head like a halo. Flecks stained his white hair and two wet red eye sockets gaped emptily above his drawn lips.
    Haskins switched the phone round and thumbed through some more photographs. He pulled one up that showed the faint red rune marked upon the man's wrist.
    I felt sick.
    I'd seen the symbol before. A friend, of sorts, had the exact same configuration in exactly the same place. I'd only seen it once; the guy wore a raincoat all year round, no matter the season. But I recognized it instantly. It looked like a wheel with nine spiked spokes issuing from its center, the top surrounded by strange, alien writing. "I need a copy of that."
    Haskins shook his head. "No. I'm not sending out copies of these pictures. I'm deleting them the minute I leave this place."
    I grabbed a pen from my pocket and sketched out the symbol on a napkin, then I asked him for the address of the murder scene. Haskins patted his pocket, no doubt reassuring himself the envelope was still there, and then gave me the location. "You gonna eat that donut?" he asked.
    "You can have it."
    Haskins wrapped it in a napkin and stood. "Later, Rook."
    I nodded. He left the diner, turning the collar of his coat up as he ran for his car. The headlights blazed in the rain as he drove away, passing from the magical quarter back to the city.
    The swell of nausea returned as I glanced at the symbol once more.
    The victim seemed to be about the same age as my friend, same build too. I took a sip of lukewarm coffee, grabbed my umbrella and headed out, a string of questions churning in my mind.

    * * *
    T he train rattled across the city as crimson moonlight washed over the dark monolithic skyscrapers. An ominous sight, as if some demonic painter had colored the city blood red. It looked unreal, like a backdrop of a movie set.
    Haskins' words tumbled through my mind, I kept seeing flashes of the victim and the rune on his wrist. I wondered what it meant, and how my friend Tom had come to have exactly the same one.
    I hadn't seen Tom for weeks, but there was nothing unusual there. Like a lot of homeless people, he tended to drift from place to place and then he'd reappear like a forgotten season. But I needed to find him now, make sure he was okay and see if he would tell me what in the hell that symbol meant.
    The murder, along with Tudor's warning, pricked me like a rash. Something was happening on my patch, something that Erland Underwood, my boss at the Organization, hadn't bothered to tell me about. I pulled out my phone in case he'd left a message, but there was nothing. Just the one text my girlfriend had sent over a year ago, that I hadn't been able to delete. The last message she'd sent before she'd been murdered.
    I thought about calling to demand an explanation but I knew I wouldn't. Underwood and the Organization were my only link to the magical world, and there was no way I'd risk breaking it. At least not until I'd found Elsbeth Wyght and avenged Willow.
    The skyscrapers receded, their silhouettes like jagged shards of onyx. The train began to slow.
    I got up, jabbed the button until the door opened, and leapt to the platform amid a wash of moonlight that looked like blood.
    An ominous sign in what was fast becoming an ominous night.

6
    C igarette butts , broken bottles and trash littered the street. The sidewalk was pitted, filthy and stained. The shops had security bars on their windows, and the faint glow of televisions flickered in the cramped apartments above.
    I checked all the obvious places; park benches, bus stops, dumpsters, doorways, and alleys. I didn't bother