Myth by RJ Dent

Author:RJ Dent [Dent, RJ]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1843862670
Published: 2013-10-12T04:00:00+00:00

22

Marcos Vandopolis awoke suddenly. A faint sound, coming up from the bar, had disturbed his sleep.

Something is wrong! An intruder! He got out of bed slowly and quietly, not wanting to awaken — or frighten — Dionna, his wife, who was sleeping soundly and peacefully beside him.

He had been the owner of the Luminos taverna for over thirty years. In all that time he'd never been burgled. There was no crime on Aphros. There was no crime on any of the Greek islands — except a few petty crimes when the tourists came — and they were always born out of stupidity, not criminality. He placed his feet on the floor quietly — he wanted to catch the burglar and administer a beating so severe that the thought of committing any further crimes would become anathema.

Suddenly a thought occurred to Marcos and he immediately wished it hadn't.

The chimera! The beast is free and it hunts at night. It comes to the village and kills at random. It is showing us its terrible and new-found power — power that had been given to it — along with freedom — by James Barratt. What if the burglar is the chimera?

Knowing he might be walking to his death, but needing to confront his intruder, Marcos moved quietly towards the bedroom door. He remembered how he'd questioned Yannis as to Barratt's suitability, expressing concern that Barratt might be too strong. He was right to have been concerned. Barratt was too strong. Too strong willed. His first real conversation with any of them had been to challenge and mock their beliefs. The chimera had appropriated his strength — and now it walked the night.

Stealthily, Marcos opened the bedroom door, went down the stairs to the bar door and eased it open slightly. He peered cautiously between the door and the frame, scrutinising the bar methodically. His sweeping search revealed nothing, although the shadows and the shuttered gloom of the room made it virtually impossible to see much at all. He opened the door a little further, his gaze spearing the darkness.

No! Nothing. Nothing at all.

But what if the beast was lurking in a shadowed recess, patiently waiting for him to step into the bar?

Very tentatively, he reached a hand through the doorway and fumbled for the light switch. As he groped around, he expected, at any moment, to feel an iron grip close around his wrist and yank him into the bar, where he would find himself confronted by the blazing eyes, slavering jaws and blood-stained teeth of the hungry chimera.

Nothing happened.

Instead, Marcos found the light switch, flicked it on and blinked at the harshly illuminated large bar room. Once his eyes had grown accustomed to the light, he looked in all of the corners of the bar and saw that the chimera was not waiting for him. He looked in recesses and took care to look under the tables, all from the safety of the doorway. Finally, he plucked up the courage to look behind the door.

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