What a Ghoul Wants Read Online Free PDF

in the castle?
     Whichever, the woman needed medical attention—that much was clear.
    Finally I backed into the room and hunted around in the dark for my jeans. At last
     I found them on the floor by the bed and shuffled into them as quickly as possible.
     My sweater was harder to locate, as it had ended up partially kicked under the bed.
     Heath stirred a little when I muttered in irritation, but otherwise he didn’t wake
     up.
    After hastily getting into the sweater, I darted to the door, opened it as quietly
     as that awful squeak would allow, and ran out into the hall. . . which was empty.
    There was no sign of the woman. Undaunted, I moved down the corridor, listening as
     I went for the sound of her whimpering, but nothing came to my ears. At the end of
     the hallway I looked first right, then left, but couldn’t see anyone about. “Dammit!”
     I muttered. Which way had she gone? Had she come to this wing to hide from her assailant?
     Had she perhaps moved back through the riffraff door to her side of the castle? And
     where the heck was that door, anyway? I realized I hadn’t paid any attention to where
     the door was located in this maze of corridors.
    I moved to my right first and went quietly along the hallway, listening for any sign
     of the distraught woman. I thought about calling out to her, but she seemed so spooked
     by my appearance that I didn’t want to send her any deeper into hiding.
    Still, as I traveled up and down both the right hallway and then the left, I could
     find no sign of her, or the main corridor leading out of this wing of the castle.
    “Well, that sucks,” I muttered when I turned a corner and saw that it was a dead end.
     Only an open window greeted me. The wind was pulling the two halves of the shuttered
     casements back and forth, and I was a bit scared that the glass would break if the
     wind was strong enough, so I moved to close the two panes. As I reached for the separate
     halves, I heard a loud splash from below. It was still very dark out, but I could
     just make out the gleam of the water in the moonlight. I peered into the dim waters
     of the moat, but saw nothing that would have been responsible for creating such a
     loud splash. “Weird,” I whispered, closing the window and throwing the lock.
    A shiver went up my spine and I felt more than a little creeped out all of a sudden.
     I had a fleeting thought that the woman I’d seen might have gone through the window
     and into the moat, but wouldn’t I have seen her jump?
    I shivered anew and turned back toward the way I’d come. I’d taken only about five
     steps away from the hidden corner with the window when the bulb right over my head
     suddenly went out, plunging me into an even murkier gloom. The hairs on the back of
     my neck stood up on end, and I looked around uneasily. A cold chill also seemed to
     fill the hallway, and suddenly I
really
didn’t want to be in that hallway. I wanted only to get back to my room—stat.
    I started trotting in that direction when all of a sudden I heard a sort of low, guttural
     growl, but not quite like a dog might make. It was a rumbling of sorts, like the sound
     a cat makes right before it hisses, only this particular rumble was much deeper and
     had more timbre.
    It came from behind me and reflexively I paused to look over my shoulder. There was
     nothing in the hallway, but I could identify where the low rumble was coming from—it
     was from the last door on the left where I’d been standing only seconds before.
    The rumble grew louder, more carnal and vicious, and for a moment I stood frozen,
     my brain trying to make sense of what was happening even as the internal warning bell
     we all carry sounded, demanding that I turn tail and run.
    Just as I was about to take off, however, there was a screech from behind the door,
     followed immediately by a tremendous crash against it. I jumped and let out a frightened
     squeal, staring hard at the door, which sounded as