Last Light (Novella) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Are you going to kill me here and now?”
    “I’d love to. Except for the security cameras. I can’t work my mojo on them. Don’t know where the digital video is stored. And even if it’s on a recorder somewhere here, they probably back it up in the cloud. So it’ll be another time and place. Besides, half the fun is in the chase. And I want to pin you down and spread those pretty legs before I cut your throat.”
    Makani wagged one finger at him, as if to say he was being a naughty boy. “Won’t happen. Instead, you’ll rot in Hell, and I’ll sing a little song of celebration over your grave.”
    “You
are
refreshing. A spunky little thing. What next—gonna pretend you can go to the cops?”
    “I could prove my gift just by touching them, reading them.”
    “Then what kind of a life would you have? You’d be a freak. The mind reader who knows things nobody wants known. They might not stone you to death, but in time they’d be lining up to shoot you in the head. Face it—you’re more alone than any girl has ever been.”
    She shrugged. “Anyway, I don’t need police. Don’t need anyone. Hasn’t it occurred to you? My first power might have sprouted another, just like yours did.”
    “I would have seen it when I read you.”
    “I didn’t see yours. Maybe you didn’t see mine.”
    He studied her, looking for a tic or tremor that would reveal her bluff.
    “Best be careful,” Makani said. “I’ve got the islands and the Irish in me. It’s a dangerous combination. Let me go my way, and I’ll let you go yours. The world’s big enough for two of us.”
    Reaching across the table, he said, “Take my hand.”
    She threw half a glass of beer in his face.
    Startled, he gasped, inhaling some of the brew, and coughed explosively.
    At nearby tables, diners turned to look. Rainer’s spell over them had been broken.
    When he saw them staring, he got control of his coughing and wiped a hand over his dripping face. Everyone who’d been interested in him looked puzzled, frowned, turned their attention elsewhere, and seemed to lose interest in the lovers’ spat or whatever it had been.
    As soon as she’d thrown the beer, Makani had slid out of the booth. She stood looking down at Rainer Sparks. “I won’t warn you again,” she said, and she walked out of the restaurant, under the torsional forms of the dead sharks swimming the air overhead.

6
On the Die
    Outside of Sharkin’, where Rainer Sparks couldn’t see her, Makani broke into a run toward the pier and the parking lot that served it. Perhaps because of the dark nature of the encounter with Sparks, she expected night when she pushed through the door, but sunshine still ruled. At least an hour of the summer day remained before the sunset might brush the palette of a Maxfield Parrish painting across the western sky.
    She had no second power, as she had claimed, no sprout that grew from the branch of her initial psychic gift. Maybe he believed that she, too, had another more formidable talent. Maybe he didn’t. In either case, he would not relent. Rainer Sparks was a narcissist, a megalomaniac who would abide no limits to his dominion, tolerate no one who denied him.
    She didn’t start shaking until she was behind the wheel of her ’54 Chevy, the ring of keys jingling as she fumbled to get the right one into the ignition. She kept glancing toward the restaurant, sure that she would see him striding toward her, but for whatever reason, he chose to allow her a chance to escape.
    Half the fun is in the chase.
    He might even take time for dinner. He had no need to hurry. The only thing that could possibly defeat him was his perfect arrogance.
    Leaving the parking lot, she turned left on Balboa Boulevard, heading toward the mainland and Pacific Coast Highway, three miles away. Traffic clotted the peninsula’s main artery, and though the jam-ups would inhibit Sparks as much as they did her, she expected to discover the white Mercedes SUV in the rearview