Poison Tongue Read Online Free PDF Page B

yet warm at the same time. It was comforting and solid and made the ache in my heart subside.
    The night air was hot and heavy, weighted like a thick cloud of smog. The sky was crimson, the moon hidden somewhere behind an overlay of blues and blacks. Crickets chirped in the distance, and a dog howled somewhere far away. The smells of fried chicken and cherry pie faded away as I distanced myself from the diner, and were replaced with the aroma of moss and dirt and a warm, Louisiana summer night.
    The moment I walked around the front of the diner, my stomach sank. In the parking lot that should’ve been empty stood a group of men. Their figures were illuminated by the streetlights, their shadows long.
    When I approached them, I noticed it was the four men from the diner. They stood in a circle, and in the bull’s-eye was the dark man I’d spoken to only minutes before. The four men were yelling at him as they closed in, saying things I couldn’t fully understand.
    “Murderer,” one sneered.
    “Devil’s child,” said another. “You’re evil. Worse than evil.”
    But he stood in the center, his body rigid, his head bowed as if he couldn’t hear a word they were saying. It wasn’t until the first man charged him that he seemed to notice they were there at all.
    The man who’d charged him I recognized as Ricky Jr., the son of Ricky, the hardware store owner. I’d always thought him to be a gentle, kind person who was a little on the shy side. Now, as I watched him raising his fists and screaming profanities at the man I didn’t know, I thought differently.
    The night was dark and the lighting poor. I could barely make out what was happening besides the colliding of forms, the smacking of fists against flesh, the thud of bodies hitting the pavement.
    With one man moaning on the ground, another rounded on the man in the center.
    “You don’t belong here, Poirier,” he yelled. “Not after what you’ve done.”
    All three men came at him at once. He landed a blow to Ricky Jr.’s nose, making him scream, but the other two men were on top of him the next second. They dropped him to the ground, one man kicking his ribs, the other cracking knuckles against his face, drawing out misty sprays of blood that fell to the pavement.
    That man was evil. His soul was darker than black. It was a multitude of endless pits, each deeper than the last.
    And yet.
    Buried somewhere inside that soul of his, some place hidden and secret, there’d been a flicker of something, something I couldn’t ignore.
    “Hey!” I yelled, rushing toward them. Everyone froze, all eyes on me. “I called the sheriff. He’ll be here in less than a minute.”
    “What the hell, Levi!” Ricky Jr. shouted back. He cupped his nose, blood seeping through his fingers. “Do you even know who he is? Do you know what he’s done?”
    “I know you ain’t the sheriff and his crimes aren’t punishable by you.”
    The sound of screeching tires in the distance seemed to startle them. The men on the ground jumped up and took off. Ricky Jr. gave me one final look before dashing off after them toward the unlit alley.
    A figure writhed on the ground, a deep moan sounding through the dense air. He sat up slowly, and like a songbird oblivious to the dangers of the wetland, I took a step toward him. And then another. And then another.
    “You all right?” I clutched the amulet in my sweaty palm as I looked down at him, not that I thought it would do me a world of good standing so near a man like him.
    The streetlights flickered above us. He sat on the ground, his legs bent, his elbows resting on his knees. Red bloodstains coated the jean jacket he wore, along with the white T-shirt pulled tight across his chest. He rolled his shoulders and tilted his head from side to side.
    He had a cut above his eyebrow that drizzled blood down the side of his cheek, along his chin, and down his throat. His busted lip wept blood. A circular red mark covered half his face, the