Tales of the Unquiet Gods Read Online Free PDF Page A

couldn't move.
    The big bouncer felt like somebody just poured ice into his veins. Muscles accustomed to obeying commands instantly lay frozen and locked. It was all Mike could do to stand as the little man with the crazy eyes and the terrifying thing raged into him.
    Armored fists thudded into Mike's torso. Each blow felt like his attacker wielded hammers. Mike had gone up against drunks and junkies with less strength. He tried to defend himself, but couldn't so much as lift his arms.
    Despair rose, threatening to swallow him whole. The kid cackled, and the pace of his blows increased. Mike sagged, and a punch glanced off his forehead. He felt heat as blood sheeted down his face, and the world flashed white again. Instead of the sea, though, Mike saw the crazy kid's disturbing collar thing.
    But in the space inside his head, the tentacles weren't dried and leathery. Slime coated leprous-pale flesh writhed against the non-background, and chitinous legs the bright shiny crimson of a hooker's lips scrabbled and twitched, trying to bring the thing closer to Mike.
    To his face.
    A surge of primal horror swept Mike down. The last thing he saw as his vision cleared and returned to the world around him was a pinpoint of horrified despair deep in the kid's eyes. Then Mike saw nothing at all.
     
    Mike's eyes flew open and his big, scarred hands closed vise-like on the wrists of the paramedic hovering over him. For a moment before he realized where he was, Mike's vision was still filled with lashing, twisting, snapping tentacles springing from a mass of slime and horn-slick ruby shell, chasing him through the dark corners of his soul.
    "Ahh!" The rather attractive paramedic cried out, black eyes wide in her suddenly pale face. Mike's crushing hands sprang off her wrists as though he'd grabbed red-hot metal bars instead of human flesh and bone. The skin on her face returned from ashen to a more normal healthy dark olive color.
    "S-sorry." Mike blinked his eyes rapidly, trying to figure out where he was. Cinder Bella's still, judging by the ceiling, snaky with hung cables for the PA, stage and mood lighting. The overheads glared down into eyes made sensitive by unconsciousness. He took it all in while trying to rid himself of the hideous dream images.
    "Where'd the little guy with the creepy necklace go?" Mike asked, still trying to come to grips with what he'd seen in the last moments of the brawl. As his shuddering heartbeat slowly calmed, Mike pushed himself up to his elbow and looked around. Bella's looked like there'd been a battle in it, which made sense. Tables and chairs were knocked all over, and more than one other EMT crouched over a prone figure. Bella - Frank - sat on the bar, talking to a cop. Another officer leaned against the front door.
    Mike craned his head around, ignoring the paramedic's sharp warning not to move as she applied temporary sutures to the cut on his forehead. He was struck by how her gentle hands didn't hurt. Then his heart sank: other cops covered the rest of the exits, including the trapdoor behind the bar from when the place had been the entrance to a speakeasy.
    Somebody must have died.
    Dammit. He was going to lose his job over this one. As the head bouncer, he was answerable for a lot of what went down in a fight. If they were lucky, he'd be the only one fired. He shook his head - angry at himself and ashamed for only then thinking about the poor, presumably, dead person - and immediately wished he hadn't.
    "I know you're tough, Mr. Runey, but stop moving your head," the pretty EMT told him, her beautiful eyes crackling now with anger. "Dennis - at the door - said he saw you go down twice during the fight. How you don't have a split skull I can't imagine, but you'll have a nasty headache for a while, regardless." Throughout the rant, her hands never stopped moving. She closed up the gash on his head, cleaned up his face and helped him pick the glass out of the back of his jacket.
    "Ma always said