Spider-Man - The Darkest Hours by Jim Butcher

Author:Jim Butcher [Butcher, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy
ISBN: 9781416594765
Publisher: Pocket Star
Published: 2006-06-27T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

When I tapped on the glass, Felicia opened the window of Aunt May's apartment. She looked at me. Then at the Rhino, wrapped in webbing from the shoulders down and strapped onto my back like a hyperthyroid papoose, the horn on his silly hat wobbling as his head bobbed in the relaxation of the senseless.

Then she looked at me again, blinked, and said, "You're kidding."

"Just open the window the rest of the way and stand back," I told her.

"I hope Aunt May is insured," she said, but she did it.

I climbed in with the Rhino on my back. I wasn't worried about hurting him if I banged him into something. I was more worried about the something. So I brought him in as carefully as I could and laid him out on the kitchen floor.

Aunt May's apartment is somewhat spartan, for an elderly lady. When she moved out of the house I grew up in, the one she had shared with Uncle Ben, she put many of her belongings in storage, rather than attempting to stuff them into her little apartment. She still has some of her furniture

- a table, chairs for it, her rocker, her couch. She replaced their double bed with a single one; there's a small guest room where she put the double, for when Mary Jane and I visit. She keeps a couple of bookshelves filled with everything from Popular Science (which I'm still half-sure she only subscribes to so that I'll have something to read when I visit) to romance novels to history books. She has a few small shelves, a few knickknacks, and that's about it.

Mary Jane came in and hugged me tight, then stared at the man on the floor. "Oh, God. What happened to his face?"

The Rhino looked bad. No worse than he had when I had picked him up, but no better, either.

"Mortia did it to him," I said. "She decided he wasn't useful anymore and started feeding on him."

Felicia regarded the Rhino with a cool, distant expression. "He's dead, then?"

"Not yet," I said.

"Are you insane?" Felicia asked quietly.

Mary Jane gave her a sharp glance.

"If Mortia did this to him," Felicia explained, "she touched him. If she touched him, she can follow him, find him, as long as he is alive. Which means - "

"She can find us here," Mary Jane breathed. She looked at me. "Peter?"

"No names," I said quietly. "He's out, but he'll be coming to anytime now. He doesn't need to know any names."

"This is massively stupid," Felicia snapped. "You're going to get yourself killed. And me with you."

"She was going to kill him," I said. "What else could I have done?"

"You could have let her kill him," Felicia said.

I was glad that I had my mask on, because I wasn't sure I could have kept the anger I felt off of my face. "What happened to treating him like a human being? To his not being all that bad a person?"

"He might not be Charles Manson, but he chose which side to play for.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.