Sins of the Son: The Grigori Legacy Read Online Free PDF Page B

of the cabin. Male, a good twenty years younger than she, well-developed musculature, unmoving, and bare as the day he was born.
    Altogether as out of place here as a grizzly would be on her verandah in the city.
    She tapped a finger against the leather wheel. Part of her wanted to go to him, to see if he was all right. He hadn’t so much as twitched in the five or so minutes since she’d arrived, and while she couldn’t see any sign of obvious injury, neither could she tell from here whether he even breathed. Another part of her, the consulting-police-psychiatrist side, urged extreme caution. She found it damned difficult to argue with almost thirty years of experience.
    Tap, tap, tap.
Cell phone service didn’t exist up here, and while the landline that ran to the cabin might have survived the unpredicted storm, the stranger lay between her and it. Her only other option was to drive back down the mountain to the nearest pay phone, a good hour away. With the road partially washed out in places, help would take another hour to get up the mountain, then they’d have to drive back here…Hell, it would be at least three hours before anyone even put a blanket over the guy. If he hadn’t already succumbed to hypothermia, he certainly would by the time she returned.
    Brushing back a strand of hair that had come loose from its customary coil at her nape, Elizabeth went back to studying the form sprawled in front of the cabin door. Where in God’s name had he come from? Hers was the only human habitat for miles, she’d seen no sign of another vehicle on her way in on the former logging road, and he certainly couldn’t have walked far without clothes in this weather. Had someone dropped him in the area? Left him for dead?
    She considered the possibilities. Drug related, maybe. Or the Russian mafia, so active in human trafficking along the coast. She grimaced and shook her head at herself. Caution was one thing, an overactive imagination quite another. Opening the door, she slid out from behind the wheel, leaving the headlights on.
    The car’s open-door reminder chimed behind her as she walked toward the cabin, feet squelching in the thick, wet carpet of evergreen needles. The forest damp crept through the gaps in her clothing and she shivered, wrapping her cardigan around her. The retreating storm grumbled in the distance.
    Still the man didn’t move.
    She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and, balancing humanity with common sense, picked up a broom propped nearby. Hefting it, she reached out to poke the figure on the porch. Nothing. She prodded a second time, and then a third, with increasing vigor. The man’s chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm, but he displayed no other sign of life.
    So. Alive, but out cold and not an immediate danger.Elizabeth went up the stairs, stepped across the prone form, unlocked the door, and switched on the porch light.
    Then, taking a deep breath, she faced the problem of moving a large naked man into the cabin.
    T HE WORLD RETURNED in millisecond bits.
    Cold.
    Wet.
    Something jabbing into him. A lightening of the darkness. Footsteps, silence, more footsteps. Hands running over his limbs, sliding under his shoulders, lifting him, tugging at him. Movement. Something soft beneath him. Warmth.
    With great effort, he forced his eyelids open. Stared at the face looking down at him. Lines appeared above the eyes that stared back. A mouth opened and sounds issued forth. Unintelligible sounds.
    Consciousness fractured again.
    Faded.
    Ended.
    E LIZABETH DIDN’T KNOW how long she stared down at the man in her arms before her knees, pressed against the floor, began to protest. He’d opened his eyes so unexpectedly. Not a groan, not a murmur, not even a catch in his breath. Just those eyes. Blacker, deeper, and emptier than she’d ever seen. As if they opened onto a void rather than a person.
    And then he’d been gone again. She’d spoken one sentence, a single reassurance, and then—nothing.