Nevermore: A Novel of Love, Loss, & Edgar Allan Poe Read Online Free PDF

and stood, nearly falling backward as the remnant of the night's alcohol hit him full strength.   He was close enough to the wall to prevent a fall, but his voice was slurred, and his movements were sluggish.
    "Who…are you?" he asked.
    "It's funny that you don't know that," the man said.   "Very funny, I think, since you've been flashing my badge around the tavern, claiming to be a man of the law, trying to rape local women – any of this getting through?   Story ring a bell?   I'm going to say this one time…you get yourself together.   You strap on whatever iron you carry, and you get outside.   I'll be waiting.   I'm watching the door, and others are watching the window.   I'm going to give you a chance you don't deserve.   You meet me out front – one of us will walk away, the other will help fertilize the local crops.   If you kill me, you'll have an honest chance to be gone from here before others show up to kill you or lock you away."
    "You have the wrong man," Thigpen said thickly.   "I am a duly appointed…"
    "Five minutes," the man said.   "Five minutes – outside, face me, or I shoot you like a dog."
    The door was suddenly empty and Thigpen reeled, nearly collapsing back over the bed.   He dropped and knelt there for a moment…then he rose.   He stared at the door, and then, as if in a trance, he turned away.   He crossed the room, buttoning his shirt, and tucking it back into his jeans.   His gun belt hung over the chair where he'd left it, and he grabbed it, fumbling it around his waist.  
    Every step he too k , every movement he made, his balance improved.   His coordination returned.   He recovered almost as if controlled by some unseen force.   His lips curled down at the corners, and the ice-chip eyes chilled.   Lenore saw this, saw the sudden transformation, and shivered.   Then, as he headed for the door – the world shifted again.
     
    E dgar wrote furiously.   He had tossed aside his story in progress after only a few moments and begun anew.   The words flowed so quickly through his thoughts that his fingers were cramped, and more than once he'd had to toss aside a pen and just grab another in fear of losing the thread.
    It was like nothing he'd ever written before.   He tried, just for a couple of moments, to pinpoint the inspiration.   All of his writing came from twisted versions of things he'd seen, or done, or read.   This was unfamiliar, raw and very powerful, and he had no idea why it had come to him.
    Grimm had stepped closer, bending his head inquisitively toward the paper.   The bird rarely showed any real interest in what he did, and this was another thing he wished he had the time to contemplate, but he knew the old magic when it wrapped around him, and he sensed nothing malign in whatever this was.   Even if he had, he would not have pulled away.   He trusted Grimm to drag him back to reality if he got in over his head, and he'd had just enough of the whiskey in his flask to unleash his own shadows.   He could be dangerous himself, if provoked, though he preferred to direct that at the pages, impaling them with quills and staining them with the ink of his nightmares.
    The story grew from the roots of a great tree.   It stretched up into shadows.   He frantically recorded his impressions, the moon's face glaring down through intricately bound branches.   Eyes – dark, hollow eyes without life – stared back from the heights, and the mist from some hidden body of water rose like tendrils of cloud to slip in and out between those branches, leaves, and ghostly-images.
    Beyond the tree, he saw an open stretch of ground.   In that space, two men faced off.   One was tall and blonde, beefy and intense.   The other was dark.   He blended into the chilly air and the wisps of mist.   His eyes were cold, dead chips of ice, and though he stood at an odd, ungainly angle, there was a sense of speed and confidence in the angle of his chin, and the loose way