Dark Heart Read Online Free PDF

overload. He couldn’t seem to shake the sludgy fear that oozed through his veins. Finally he was able to get the right key in the lock and turn it. He pushed into his apartment, shut and locked the door behind himself, and stood there breathing hard, clutching the skin.
    Beside the door, the green light of the small alarm control box changed to red and began to blink. He flipped it open and reset it, then turned back toward the living room beyond the small entry foyer.
    The only light was the weak city glow that leaked through the dingy picture window and created dim white squares on his faded green carpet, vaguely illuminating a week’s worth of newspapers, crumpled Budweiser cans, and empty pizza boxes.
    He wiped the sweat and rain from his forehead, walked into the kitchenette, and dropped the skin on the tile floor. That stink that Madrone couldn’t place was strong now. It smelled as if someone had been cooking Chinese food. He reached for the light switch—
    Something blotted out the light in front of the picture window.
    Madrone’s heart bulged straight up into his throat. Somebody here? Here?
    But this was the fourteenth floor. Whatever it was, it had to come in through the window. The dead bolt had been locked in the door. The alarm had still been on and functioning. Nobody had come through that door.
    So how could anything—anything at all—be here? It couldn’t. It was plain and simple. Impossible.
    “Huhnng…” he said. A low, choking sound of pure terror. He fumbled out his pistol, his fingers quivering so badly he nearly dropped it.
    The shadows before the window shifted again, and a sudden blast of that now familiar stink filled his nose. But not cold and weak, like the skin on the kitchen floor. This was hot, fetid, boiling with life. And in that swirl of shadowed motion he saw the shape of it as it turned toward him.
    It wasn’t a second-story man, or some kind of genius lock-cracker.
    It wasn’t the Egg Foo Young guy, somehow miraculously returned for round two.
    It was worse, far worse.
    It wasn’t even human.
    Pointed wings rose above its low, squat head. Tightly packed muscles bulged on its massive frame. A thin, pointed tail whipped through the air behind it. As it stepped toward him, its great weight made even the concrete floor beneath the frayed carpet vibrate. Its red eyes glowed at Madrone, burning him somehow, turning his fear into stark terror.
    “Oh, sweet Jesus save us,” Madrone moaned, raising his revolver.
    The shadowy thing launched itself at Madrone too fast for anything living to see.
    Madrone pulled the trigger.
    The monster barreled into him and slammed him against the wall so hard the plaster cracked. His vision blurred from the shock of the blow. He fell to his knees, tried to suck in a breath, tried to bring his gun to bear on it again.
    He screamed as he distinctly heard his fingers snap with a sound like crunching celery stalks. Suddenly his arm was numb below the elbow, and he knew he wasn’t holding the gun any more.
    He thought it should hurt as he fell backward to the floor, but he couldn’t seem to feel anything. Not his hands, his legs, or his face. Nothing.
    He tried to gasp for breath, and couldn’t. In the split second since he’d seen the creature, he had somehow lost everything, his gun, his footing, even the ability to breathe and feel. A rocking shudder ran through his body. He finally managed to focus his eyes on the thing that stood over him. As a gesture of resistance, his glare was pitiful, but it was all that was left to him. And he was Sicilian enough to feel some shred of defiant pride in being able to do it. If only he could spit in its face before it killed him…
    What the hell was it? He couldn’t see it clearly, even though it was right in front of him, looming over him. He could only see its silhouette, as if the room’s shadows conspired to hide it.
    He tried to reach out and touch it, but his arms wouldn’t move. Something was