Unshapely Things Read Online Free PDF Page B

started the car. I stared down the alley after he drove off. Even in the stark light of day, the buildings could not muster more color man brick, and gray, and faded yellow. Rain-soaked paper and rotting leaves lined the gutters where the occasional weed fought to take root. Under a crisp blue June sky, it was just a melancholy, depressing place. But when day turned to night, melancholy turned to menace. Shadows lengthened and the gray deepened, hiding danger and calling fear. And two young men called it home.
    I shivered, whether from my thoughts or the light breeze wasn't clear.
    As I made my way up to the Avenue, a group of teenage boys came swaggering up the sidewalk, dressed in baggy jeans and red T-shirts. They didn't speak to each other, more interested in looking menacing as they scanned the street. They didn't part around me, but made a point of jostling me as they passed. Their essences were human, one of the xenophobic gangs that liked to show the human presence on the Avenue. They had their own colorful names, but most people just called them the xenos. I suppressed my annoyance because I wasn't in the mood to provoke them. Their organizing principles centered on conspiracy theories about secret fey alliances controlling the government. They were prejudiced thugs who preyed on the drunk and the drugged. They made damn sure they didn't try anything with any fey who had real power.
    I hit the groceria on the corner of my street and picked up some nice sodium-rich deli meats, bread, some sundries, and a bag of Oreos in case Joe stopped in.
    Back in my loft, I poured myself a cup of stale coffee and sat at the computer staring out the window. I didn't really believe the Tuesday Killer was finished. Murdock was right. The killer was trying to accomplish something even if he had a disassociated personality. Anyone who carved a heart out of a body had to be damned disassociated. Whatever it was, someone, somewhere was bound to know about it.
    I pulled down a concordance of ancient druidic ceremonial writings. It was a nice little reference but only partially helpful. The druids themselves rarely wrote anything down, and most of the existing material was secondhand. Of that, even less was available to the general public. I counted myself lucky to have my own copies of high holiday ceremonies as well as the divination series put out by Modern Library back in the sixties before the Ward Guild shut them down. Most everything else I knew came from the classical oral training I had learned in camp. And that was stuff I kept meaning to put on the computer. The only heart removal references were the usual anecdotal junk that no one's ever proved, and even that didn't include the rituals themselves. I tossed the book aside.
    Even if the ceremony were druidic, I kept coming back to who could know such a thing. Modern druids considered the old sacrifice stories a lie to discredit them, so they would hardly be candidates for passing down the information. A controversy flared up a few years back when it was discovered that an orthodox sect in northern Maine occasionally chewed raw meat for divination. The Ward Guild even investigated, but no evidence of anything illegal turned up. If anyone did know an ancient blood ritual, it would be them. But only a few were left, pretty ancient themselves, and not likely to be hitting on prostitutes without raising an eyebrow, even in the Weird. I didn't relish driving up to the Canadian border to find out.
    I stretched back in the chair. The Guild had an excellent database. Even though I was no longer on staff, I could get in. Practically everyone in the place builds a back door into the computer systems on the remote chance they'll get the old access denied. Sure, they made a monthly security sweep, but if you had enough computer knowledge and enough ability to ward against detection, they weren't likely to find you. I had both at one time. My wards were still in place, at least the last time I