The Dark Need Read Online Free PDF Page A

shivered under them, and then the boat stopped, stopped hard like a car, tipping a little, a screech of wood as the hull tore open.Crucifix Girl was hurled from the boat, landing on her back on the ice. It held, but spider cracks spread out around her like one of those haloes in old cathedral frescoes.
    His teeth jarred, Matt stepped carefully from the boat. The groaning of wood and the growl of ice all around him. He could feel it giving beneath his feet. Breathing, one gasp after the other. The ax clutched in one hand. He reached his other down to the girl. “Take it,” he whispered, his eyes wide. “Take my hand. Come on.”
    Her eyes round with terror. She reached up, and the ice beneath her cracked sharply. Water welled up around her body and then she fell back into the darkness of it, her mouth opening to scream as the water rushed over her face.
    With a cry, Matt dove, grabbed her wrist before it went beneath, gripped, pulled her up. He was on his knees, the ice cracking under him. His mind one scream of terror:
Oh God, oh God, oh God. This is it. The cold. The cold again. Oh God.
    But he did not let go. He pulled, and her face came up out of the water, her eyes shut, her lips blue. Coughing the lake out of her mouth. Matt got his arm under hers and around her, pulling her to him, the strain in his arms, then the ice under him gave way and he felt the water like a great cold mouth closing on him, the pressure and the savage bite of it around his legs and waist. He swung the ax, extending his arm as far as he could, slamming the blade of it into the thicker ice nearer the shore. The water flooded around his chest. He held fiercely to that ax, though the cold was so keen he could not breathe. It took away his vision, the whole world white and sharp with pain. The girl coughing beside him, her teeth clacking together, only her head above the lake. Everywhere the groan of resisting ice. Holding that ax, holding that ax.

6
    An hour before midnight
    “Hold on to me,” Matt gasped. “Damn you, arms around my neck, and hold on. Don’t let go.”
    He felt her arm around his neck. A tiny sound in her throat, part whimper and part rasp. Only seconds, maybe, before she blacked out. He had to trust her grip, had to hope. The freezing water cut through wool and skin and bone. Yet he could feel warmth—his body going warm—and that was bad. Very bad. Two or three yards of thicker ice, then the shore. He could see it: frozen grasses and the cedars tall and dark, and something darker behind them—a structure, probably. A house or a shed or a barn. Safety. Warmth.
    With a roar raw in his throat, Matt let go of the girl and climbed up the haft of his ax, one hand, then the next, pulling himself up out of the water, until his belly was on trembling, shivering ice, and she, clinging to him, both of them with their legs in the lake. Even as the ice gave way beneath his chest, Matt wrenched the head of the ax free, swung it up, slammed its blade down against the heavier ice an arm’s length ahead. Praying under his breath in case God was awake and listening. The ax blade sank into the ice and cracks ran outward from the shock of it, but the cracks were thin, spidery, and few. Fighting against the warmth gathering in his chest, bringing sleep and death, Matt heaved the girl out of the water, threw her up onto the ice. She lay there, her eyes closed, her lips blue. Small shivers taking her. Matt clung to the ax amoment, panting, then hauled himself up, hand over hand. He would not die in the cold. Not again. Whatever second death might await him, he wanted it to be a warm one.
    He had his chest out of the water. Wheezing, his vision tunneled. He bit his lip, hard. Didn’t feel it. Bit the inside of his cheek. Felt that. Used it to keep himself awake. Hauled his hips out, then his legs. His teeth chattering and the crack of ice under him. He scurried over it, grabbing the girl’s collar quick and sliding her along with him, as the