Grim Tidings Read Online Free PDF Page A

light.
    â€œAlas.” Kubler favored me with a bloody grin. “A bullet,” he said. “Meant for another. But you have missed your chance all the same. I am not long for this world, and my soul remains my own.”
    He started to laugh again, until I crouched down and peeled back his lab coat, revealing the starburst of blood and powder burn in his side just above his hip bone. “Gut shot?” I said. Kubler gasped, his neck twisting a little in pain.
    â€œWhat would you know about it?”
    â€œI’m not a doctor like you,” I said, pulling the knife from its leather case. The case was soft and smooth under my fingers, even though the leather was mottled and dark from being in my bag, my back pocket or tucked against my skin for over twenty years. “But I have been around a lot of dying people, and gunshot wounds are usually quick.”
    Kubler tried to back up, but he was trapped between his bookcase and his desk. A few files slithered off the top, raining onionskin paper around us that landed and sopped up his blood. “That is unless you take a slug in the guts,” I said. “Then it can take hours. Worse if you rupture the intestines. Then you can go septic waiting to die. I’ve heard the pain is indescribable. But that’s not the point. The point is, it takes hours.”
    I leaned in, pressing my free hand against Kubler’s wound. He let out an animal cry, but I was stronger than him and his struggling didn’t do much more than smear blood up to my wrist. “Lucky for you, I’ve got all day.”
    He started to laugh at me, and coughed up blood. A droplet landed in my eye, staining half my vision red. “My soul remains my own. Yours, I’m not so sure about.”
    â€œMe neither,” I said, sitting cross-legged and tapping the knife blade against Kubler’s metal desk. He grimaced at me.
    â€œVas?”
    â€œOh, I’m waiting,” I said, tapping out the beat from “In the Mood”. “As long as I stick you before you expire, I still collect. But I think we can afford to wait a little longer.”
    For the first time, Kubler’s face slackened. He was yellow, in the whites of his eyes and the pale skin around his lips. The bullet must have nicked his liver. “You cannot . . . you would torture me?”
    I shrugged. A clock was ticking somewhere, and Kubler’s rusty wheezing filled up the space between us. He glared at me, his eyes burning, but he could barely keep his eyes open.
    â€œYou think Hell will be a misery for me?” he gasped finally. “I am in Hell. Stuck in this place, with the trenches full of animal corpses—the living ones and their stink . . . the cow mewlings and screamings . . . after this place, Hell will be a comfort.”
    All at once, our little waiting game got tiresome. “Those people you keep out there in the mud and the shit,” I said quietly, “will have the comfort of knowing that they’ll never have to see your face again, because you died like a coward begging for the pain to stop. And those trenches you throw their bodies into were a hundred times too good for your corpse.”
    I leaned forward and stuck the knife between his ribs. I aimed up and into his heart, shuddering as the wasted, tattered thing that was all that left of most warlock’s souls flowed into the knife. “And by the way, I’ve seen Hell,” I whispered in Kubler’s ear as he groaned. “They still have a few surprises waiting for you.”
    The blade glowed for a few seconds, like I’d heated it over an open flame, and then quieted.
    I shoved the knife back into its case and stood, swiping the last of Kubler’s blood off my face. The whole hospital was still eerily silent, more like a morgue than a medical center. Nothing good happened in this place. Nothing good had set foot on this ground in a long, long time.
    I stepped into the hall,