Dark to Mortal Eyes Read Online Free PDF

friend.”
    Beau shook his head, choked down the last of his coffee. His movements were growing jittery; his eyes were glazing over. “You made it clear: No runnin’off at the mouth.” The kid’s rambling grew louder. “I swear my lips’re sealed. I wanna be part of what’s goin’ down.”
    Stahlherz lifted a canvas sack onto his lap and located the zipper. “And what, precisely, do you believe is ‘goin’ down’?”
    “Like you always say, it’s for you to know and me to find out.”
    “Actually I say that it’s on a need-to-know basis.”
    “Yeah, that’s it. That’s exactly what I told him.”
    “Told whom?”
    “Uh, no, what I meant was—”
    Stahlherz slashed his fingers across his recruit’s shoulder and hooked them into a pressure point. The boy’s words crumbled into a moan while Stahlherz continued digging into skin and nerve tissue. After retracting his fingers, he unloaded from his sack a worn denim jacket. Certain that the pockets contained the requisite items, he wrapped it across Beau’s back, then beckoned his sedated rook from the sack.
    “Your turn,” he directed. “I told you your chance would come.”
    With glassy eyes reflecting the bar’s neon light, the bird clawed his arm, a fiend rising from the darkness. Stahlherz jerked. A talon—breaking his skin!
    “Careful there. You do as you’re told.”
    Ka-kaw-reech!
A paroxysm rippled through the creature’s muscles.
    Stahlherz mouthed an injunction: “Rook captures pawn.”
    The bird hovered over the table, then, in a shuffle of feathers and talons, settled on Beau’s shoulder.
Kee-reech-reach-insiiide!
It spoke into the boy’s ear, the tip of the beak dipping into the orifice like a pen into an inkwell. Beau’s lips parted in a gasp, seeming to repeat his earlier comments as statements of acquiescence:
We’re all expendable … Bring it on. I’ll take the rap
.
    Without further fanfare, the rook disappeared.
    Stahlherz stood and wiped at his wound with a napkin, then plucked at the single black feather now protruding from his recruit’s ear. The girl lowered her magazine to the counter and peeked over her glasses at Beau’s immobile figure.
    “He’ll come around,” Stahlherz said, slipping currency onto the magazine. “A bit disoriented, but he’ll be ready for his assignment. Fifty dollars? I think that’ll cover the extra ‘shot’ you put in his drink.
Audentes fortuna juvat
.”
    “Fortune favors the daring,” she repeated in English. Then pocketed the cash.
    Stahlherz had intended for his words to seal her loyalty, yet as he shuffled out the door, he was annoyed by the lackadaisical shrug of her shoulders. “You live your life. I’ll live mine …” It seemed to be this generation’s motto. Though it served his and the Professor’s needs for privacy, it made motivating their recruits laborious.
    Is there no one willing to fight? Are there only pawns on this board of life?
    Stahlherz challenged the night. “A fight to the death—that’s what I want. Come now, Mr. Addison, surely there are easier ways to get the job done, but let’s you and me make a game of it.”

3
What You Cannot See
    Josee Walker emerged at dawn from the tent. Her muscles felt like damp ropes strapped across her back, and her hips creaked like old fence slats.
I’m falling apart
, she thought. Defective merchandise. She snugged a coat over her Seattle Mariners sweatshirt.
    Across the firepit, Scooter was perched on a decaying log. “You sleep okay?”
    She shrugged. “How long’ve you been up?”
    “A while, I guess. Didn’t sleep much.”
    “Me neither.”
    Her mind had been mulling over today’s reunion. Wednesday, October 29. For the first time since birth, she would see her mother. One o’clock at Avery Park. No big deal, but she’d go through with it for her own peace of mind, then move on. As for her father, Marsh Addison? According to Kara, he was “conflicted and confused.” He’d opted out.
Typical