Blood Claim Laura Mykles (best classic novels txt) 📖

than its dimensions. It hadn't taken him much to set the fire inside the kitchen—nothing major, mind, only enough to gut the kitchen itself—and it took very little to convince the proprietors to just wait on the restoration work. There had been a large squawk about it, but eventually it died down, and the restaurant was his. From there, it was just a matter for the weather to take a colder turn, which would set Brutus free.

A banging came from upstairs. It wasn't Brutus, who was waiting patiently for true dark by the door and unable to take physical form quite yet. Lathe stood up, climbing the staircase to the main level. The building had been a restaurant for so long, it reeked of humans and their filthy habits, but it hadn't always had such an innocuous existence. People had died here, and died violently. Lathe knew of a suicide on the third floor, a murder/suicide on the second, and an older convalescing patient who had been tossed down the stairs. When that hadn't finished the job, a stout branch had. They were all still there, and the other—Luke, Lathe had learned—would be able to pick up more from them than he could.

They were all effects, however, and not the cause. Lathe took the stairs up to the second floor. No tables were set up here, no banquet space despite the view of the river from the windows. The only thing in the room was a huge bookcase against the near wall, with a dollhouse-size model of the house. He stepped onto the second-floor landing. He had to go past the public washrooms that had been converted from other rooms. A woman wept eternally to herself in the women's toilet. He ignored her.

The window was no longer visible. A blue light came from just before it and obliterated it completely. It was a sickly blue, almost purple, like the color of a freshly bloomed bruise, and it swirled maliciously in its place.

"Hello,” Lathe said. The angry blue light reached for him and tried to pull energy from him, but it was weak, and made weaker by its lack of victims. The restaurant owners must have recognized it, if not understood it, for what it was; the restaurant closed at three p.m. and didn't open until ten the next morning. The vortex worked best at night when it could insinuate itself into dreams.

The light slid off Lathe harmlessly. There was nothing left inside him to corrupt. The circle pulsed once, sullenly, and then withdrew from him.

The power lines to the city, the ones that were designed for Lathe and Lathe's kind, were being consumed by this thing, like a leech swollen with the blood of its host. It was a good thing Cory had made himself stronger; he would need that extra bit of strength to contain it all. “Soon,” Lathe told the vortex. He'd have to encourage it to enter the new host, but that was easily enough done, and it would know mortal death.

The vortex pulsed again, furious, but it had no voice to protest with. There was no malicious thought behind it. It just was. And like all thoughtless beasts, it would serve Lathe in whatever way he demanded, resentful or otherwise.

True darkness finally arrived. Lathe was safe in the twilight once the sun set, but Brutus needed the absolute dark to become physically present. Lathe went downstairs to free the beast.

Brutus scrambled across the wooden patio, his claws leaving half-inch scratches through the paint and into the treated wood beneath. He was still mostly smoke and shadow, but his claws and teeth were fully formed.

Lathe let him play, if that was the word for it, for a moment. When Brutus pounced on a moth he'd been stalking, the grass beneath his paws withered and died as he sapped the meager life from the insect.

"Brutus,” Lathe said. The great beast stopped and looked at him, ears pricked. He was now whole, but his black eyes were so dark they reflected nothing. “Find him,” Lathe continued. The words had to be said out loud to bind Brutus to them.

Brutus sat up and howled at the moon. In the distance, a barking dog yelped like a trapped puppy and was silent. The entire neighborhood held its breath, Lathe felt, and then Brutus turned. He sniffed the air, cocked his head, and was off, leaping from pooled shadow to pooled shadow, appearing fully formed from each new jump.

Lathe followed. Corbin had nested close to the vortex, knowingly or otherwise, just on the other side of the second river and up the hill. Twice he had to call Brutus back. The cold snap hadn't been long enough to drive the homeless into shelters, and Brutus had to cross downtown to get to Corbin. The homeless, those too far gone in their own personal hell to ever come back, recognized Brutus for what he was. As Brutus passed their hovels and cardboard castles, Lathe heard the ones still awake draw back in terror and the sleeping ones cry out for their mothers or their bottles, whichever they held dearer.

But Brutus was on a mission and wouldn't be distracted from it. He leapt ahead, taking massive bounds, and when he had to wait for Lathe, his entire body shook with resentment.

They had to cross another river. This one was older and deeper than the one by the vortex. It brought with it the scrapings from the mountains. Soon, Lathe would be in control of the potential energy, and he found himself quivering as well. Soon.

Brutus led him down a new street, then another and another. Each one was less lit than the last, until it was dark enough that Brutus could heel beside him, and the touch of his breath, the ender of life, was welcomed on the back of Lathe's thigh.

The garage behind the steepled white and green house was not used forvehicles, as did the rest of the freestanding structures in the