Gods of Manhattan Read Online Free PDF

of a bullet.
    A bloody rose bloomed at the back of the young man's head, opposite the hole that had suddenly appeared just below the white strip of hair. His eyes bulged, lost focus, and then he toppled backwards, dead.
    Johann flinched, feeling the weight of the boy's boot come off his back, then heard the splash of the heavy corpse hitting the puddles of the grimy alley floor.
    For a moment, there was no sound at all, bar a kind of high-pitched squeak, an animal whimper that crawled out of the throat of the boy with the swastika shirt, as if he was some small burrowing thing caught in a wire trap.
    Then there was laughter.
    A terrible, echoing laugh, of a kind one might find in the pits of Hell, a laugh that bounced and rolled off the brick and steel and seemed to echo from every corner at once, booming, roaring, growing louder and louder. Johann felt ice in his chest, and once more his wrinkled lips began to stumble through the Kaddish, eyes shutting tight, as if warding off imaginary monsters in the way he had as a child.
    When he opened them again, the monster stood in front of him.
    He was close to six foot in height, and the long coat of black leather he wore gave him the appearance of being half shadow, a silhouette picked out against the gaslight of the street beyond. Johann blinked the raindrops from his eyes - or were they tears? - and tried to make out further detail, but there was none, only a sea of black, a black hole in space in the shape of a man. Black suit and shirt, black gloves with an odd texture to them, holding a pair of automatic pistols. And a black slouch hat that covered his face-
    - oh God, his face!
    Johann gasped, and behind him the boy in the swastika made another strangled cry, as though the wire around the struggling animal had tightened.
    His face! That terrible mask!
    As the monster tilted his head to stare at his persecutors, Johann could see the whole of it. A head of black leather, with a mask of shining metal, and that metal mask coloured a burnished bloody red, featureless but for the eight lenses that shone in the half-light like the eyes of some terrible spider, hiding all evidence of humanity. The effect was terrifying, an emotionless blank visage that spoke of remorseless, unstoppable vengeance for unimaginable crimes. Behind him, Johann heard the boy in the swastika shirt scream.
    "What are you? You ain't human!"
    The man in the blood-red mask hissed, like escaping steam, and then the hiss turned into a laugh, that devil's laugh, mocking, sneering, rolling across the wet stone.
    Then he raised his twin pistols.
    The boy with the piercings -- the one who'd remained silent up until now - let out a yell and hurled himself towards the figure in black, switchblade gleaming. In response, there was the roar of automatic fire as shot after shot slammed into his bare chest and burst from his back in fountains of blood and bone. His face twisted in an agonised rictus as he took two more steps forward, propelled by the momentum of his charge, and then dropped to the alley floor, a foot from the Rabbi's trembling, prone form.
    Johann felt the warmth as the young man's blood pooled against him.
    The boy in the swastika shirt took a stumbling step backward, his face deathly pale and slick with sweat. His own blade slid from his grasp to clatter on the ground at his feet, and his hands slowly jerked upwards, as if on puppet strings. "Please." he croaked, tears streaming down his face. "Please. Please."
    The man in the mask stopped laughing.
    He stepped over Johann's shaking body, walking towards the boy, gazing down on him with those eight expressionless glass eyes. Again, there was a hiss, like steam escaping from some dreadful engine of death.
    Then he spoke.
    " You... surrender. "
    The boy blinked, slowly shaking his head. The crotch of the ripped denim jeans he wore darkened as a stream of piss trickled down his leg to mix with the rainwater and the blood.
    Gently, the man in the mask pressed