Standing in the Shadows Read Online Free PDF Page B

friggin 'nun! Go get you some, girlfriend
!
    She'd tried to explain that the easy warmth that Georg exuded didn't warm her. It was sort of like the way her taste buds could not be fooled by saccharine or Nutrasweet. The sweetness didn't follow through, it didn't satisfy. Her girlfriends had shrugged
that off as unconvincing. They told her she was too fussy. Or just plain chicken.
    The fact that she hadn't gone to bed with that awful man had been her one small, private satisfaction and comfort afterwards, when her world lay around her in ruins.
    Nobody in the bus was the right size or build to be Georg. Every time the bus lumbered to a stop, she held her breath until she saw who boarded. A teenage Goth girl with black lips and a pierced face. A portly Latina lady. A young urban professional woman in a suit, coming home from working Saturday at some high-powered job, like she herself so often had, back in the dear old days of steady employment. No Georg. Not
that she would necessarily recognize his face, after what Connor had done to it. The memory of that bloody duel made her queasy again.
    She was being stupid, really. If Novak really was bothering to think of her, it wouldn't be Georg that he would send.
    It could be anybody.
     
    Novak read the e-mail on the screen of the laptop and typed a response. His hands were deft on the keyboard even with the use of only his right hand plus the thumb and middle finger of his left. He stared at the text as he rubbed the stumps of his maimed hand.
    A constant, throbbing reminder of the debt he was owed. The wind on the terrace made his eyes tear up. They burned and stung, unused to the colored lenses, and he pulled the case out of his pocket and removed them. The glues and the custom-made prosthetics that changed the shape of his features were uncomfortable, but temporary. Just until he could organize a final bout of cosmetic surgery.
    He gazed out over the city. Such a pleasure, after months of staring at the walls of a prison cell, to cast his gaze out toward ranges of ragged mountains that hemmed in the jewel-toned greens and blues and silver grays of Seattle. He hit send, and took a sip of cabernet out of a splendid reproduction of a second-century B.C.E. Celtic drinking cup. It was fashioned from a real human skull, decorated with hammered gold. A fanciful indulgence, but after his prison experience, he was entitled.
    He had Erin to thank for this expensive new caprice. Odd, that he had not developed a taste for blood-drenched Celtic artifacts until now. Their penchant for ritual murder resonated in his own soul.
    The sacrifice that he had planned was blessed by the gods. He knew this was so because Celia had come to him in a vision. He was always moved when one of his angels visited him. They had come to him in the hospital where he lay near death, and they had comforted him in prison. Souls he had liberated, forever young and beautiful. Their shades had fluttered around him, distressed to see him suffering. Belinda had come, and Paola, and Brigitte, and all the rest, but when Celia came, it was special. Celia had been the first.
    He savored his wine, his pulse leaping at the memory of the night that had marked his life. He had taken Celia's lovely body, and as he spent himself inside her, the impulse rose up like a genie from a bottle, huge and powerful. The urge to place his thumbs against the throbbing pulse in her throat, and press.
    She had thrashed beneath him, her face turning color, protruding eyes full of growing awareness. Celia could not speak, she could only gasp, but he had sensed her passionate assent. They had been linked, a single mind. She was an angel, offering herself to him.
    The fanged gods had claimed him as their own that night. And he had understood what tribute the gods demanded to confer power and divinity. They had marked him, and he would prove himself worthy.
    Celia had been a virgin, too. He had found that out afterwards, when he washed himself. How