Hunting Karoly Read Online Free PDF Page B

thousand times. Testing it, I sat where he had sat on the sofa and gasped out loud at the sensation that shot up my spine. Something equally dark, yet hot, stirred between my legs, reminding me against my will of the vampire’s hypnotic, electric touch…
    Hastily, I stood again. To air the room, no doubt, the garden door was open too. I stepped outside into the relentless drizzle, wondering if all trace of his presence would be washed away by the rain. Wandering aimlessly about the lawn and patio, I could still sense him, but far less than inside. Though he had been here, it was probably not as recently as last night…
    So where had he gone while I spoke to Nick? This door had been locked then, so he hadn’t come out here… Now I knew what I was looking for, I went back inside, through the conservatory and the dining room and back along the passage to the reception hall. Everywhere, I could sense him. When I touched the handle of the front door, I knew he had touched it too. The force of it nearly burned me.
    Going back into the street, I untied the wet and grateful Dog and began to walk along the road. As I grew used to the novel feeling, I found I could pay at least a minimum of attention to my surroundings and still sense where he had been. And he had been in this street many times, just as he had said. So was his lair near here? I rather thought so, though the daunting task of finding it was not one that greatly appealed. Besides the hotel and other old houses, the disused warehouses and tenements nearby, all with suitably dank and dark-looking cellars, we were right on the river here and it was not outwith the bounds of possibility that he was hiding in one of its maintenance tunnels or drains or whatever they were. I really didn’t fancy investigating there.
    Perhaps I would just give what I knew to Frank and Hilda tomorrow. Only, of course, they were under no obligation to believe me. And I did really like this recurring vision of showing them the vampire’s dead body with my stake through his heart…
    At the next corner stood an old church, still in use judging by the services listed on the board at the door. He had passed here too, though when I quickly ran up the steps and touched the door handle, I got nothing. Well, Nigel’s helpful notes had said that most vampires avoided holy places. I turned down the next street, away from the river, and walked toward an old warehouse, or a factory perhaps, mostly boarded up. It seemed a likelier prospect. Certainly he had come this way and recently.
    My heart beat louder now with the prospect of success, but when I touched the stone walls, the door handles, I felt nothing. He wasn’t there. Sighing, I dragged Dog back the way we had come. I realized I was really no further forward. I knew he had been here a lot, but then I had known that last night. His lair could still be anywhere in the city.
    Dog pulled me hard across the road back toward the church, apparently for the sole purpose of lifting his leg on the railings that surrounded it. While Dog decanted in the rain, I peered through the railings to the scrubby ground surrounding the church building. Here, toward the back of it, the ground dropped steeply down to a small door low down on the building, as if to an undercroft.
    Frowning, I grasped the railings to look more closely—and felt a shock run through me from fingertips to spine, so powerful that it made me gasp aloud. He had touched these railings, possibly often and certainly recently.
    Dog was large, but mostly fur and bone, so he went through the railings easily enough when I pushed. Getting myself over was harder, though far from impossible, remembering the adventurous child I had once been.
    In moments Dog and I were both down the slope. However, doomed to disappointment once more, I got no reaction from the low door. Touching the walls, I was sure there was something , yet I could see no way in.
    Dog, snouting about in the scrubby, overgrown bushes,