Mixed Blood Read Online Free PDF

loved that dog.
    “No, not to Barney,” Burn said. “We’ll get you another dog, I promise.”
    “I want Barney.” Now Matt was crying.
    The tears of his son, coming after all that had happened that night, pushed Burn close to his edge. He had to fight to stay focused and withdraw his hand, start the car, and head back to the road.
    Matt cried himself to sleep as they drove.

    Most nights Benny Mongrel dozed on the top floor of the house, sitting beside Bessie under the stars. But that night he couldn’t. He kept on playing the scene over in his head, the American gangsters climbing up into that house like monkeys. And not coming back.
    For the first time he looked forward to being picked up at dawn.
    When the Sniper Security truck rattled up just before 6:00 a.m., Benny Mongrel waited downstairs with Bessie. He helped her up onto the back and sat down on the bench, Bessie beside him. The truck bumped down the mountain and skirted downtown Cape Town. It was too early for rush hour, so the driver sped through the city streets, away from Table Mountain and its fleecy cloth of cloud. Soon they were in an area of run-down factories and cramped houses that hunched against the railway line.
    There were four other night watchmen in the truck. Benny Mongrel ignored them. He had made no friends at Sniper Security. Life had taught him that if you worry about other people, you forget to look after yourself.
    Benny Mongrel had lived by his wits since he was an hour old, thrown onto a garbage dump and left to die, his tiny naked body still covered in afterbirth. Some survival instinct had forced him to cry out into the night, and to carry on crying into the gray and drizzly dawn as a ragged band of homeless people mined the acres of garbage for anything of use.
    He cried until a homeless woman reached down and pulled him from a pile of rotting bones and fish heads and lifted him to her breast. And then he never cried again. Ever.
    So began Benny Mongrel’s procession through orphanages and poorhouses. Some unknown petty official had given him the name Benjamin Niemand. Benjamin Nobody.
    By the time he was ten Benny Niemand lived on the streets. He was twelve when he approached a group of Mongrels who were hanging outside a shebeen in Lotus River, eyeing a band of Americans chatting up girls across the road. Benny Niemand walked straight up to the Mongrel leader, Chippies, and told him he wanted to join their gang.
    They all laughed at him, and Chippies, half in jest, handed him a long-bladed knife and pointed toward the group of Americans. “See that one with the hat on?”
    Benny Niemand saw a thickset man of thirty, heavily tattooed, leaning against a building as he pulled a girl toward him. Benny nodded.
    “Show him his mother and you can be a Mongrel.” Chippies laughed, exposing his missing front teeth, expecting the boy to hand the knife back.
    Instead Benny Niemand walked across the road, the knife held close against his leg. The tattooed American had walked the girl into a doorway, and his hand was moving between her legs. Benny Niemand tapped him on the back with the hand that wasn’t holding the knife.
    The American spun on him. “What you want?”
    “To show you your mother,” Benny said, and slipped the knife between the American’s ribs. He pulled the knife out, watched the dying man slump to his knees, heard the screams of the girl, and calmly walked back to where the Mongrels stood. He handed the knife to the leader.
    From then on he was Benny Mongrel. He lived by his wits, and he developed an almost infallible sixth sense. He knew when trouble was coming.
    He and his knife were always ready.
    The truck slammed to a halt in the Sniper Security yard in Salt River. Bessie lost her footing and skidded in the back of the truck, her nails fighting for a grip on the slick metal. One of the other guards laughed but quickly shut up when he saw Benny Mongrel looking at him. Benny Mongrel helped Bessie down. Her hips