Night of Long Shadows: The Inquisitives by Paul Crilley

Author:Paul Crilley [Crilley, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780786942701
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Publishing
Published: 2010-01-13T00:00:00+00:00

Cutter had seen a lot of dead bodies over the years. Host, he’d been the cause of a lot of them. But he’d never had to look at one he had any kind of emotional connection with. He’d always been able to separate himself from what he saw.

That wasn’t possible this time.

He stood before the open doorway of the half-collapsed house. The hallway stretched before him, a long path into darkness.

“It’s the last door on the right,” said Wren quietly.

Cutter stepped into the house. The old floorboards creaked beneath his feet. Had she heard something similar? Had she been prepared for an attack, or was she surprised?

He passed a door that opened into a large living room. A stone fireplace took up half the wall. He wondered who had lived here before. It was the kind of home he always wished for as a child, big and rambling, with places to hide and play. He could almost see them gathered around the fire on cold winter nights.

Cutter hoped they had been happy. He wouldn’t want Rowen to die in a place surrounded by the ghosts of an unhappy past. It was a strange thought. People lived their lives in a house, never imagining what would happen after they had gone. That wasn’t the way people thought. At the most, imagination might turn to events from the past. If people knew something had once happened in a particular room, their senses might reach out and trick them with a half-glimpsed ghost. But who was to say all such ghosts were from the past? Why could ghosts not be from some terrible deed committed in the future?

Cutter blinked, aware that his thoughts were running away from him, stalling him from doing what had to be done. He turned away from the room and walked slowly to the last room in the hallway, his stomach writhing like a pit of angry snakes.

He took a deep breath.

And stepped into the room.

He knew where to look straight away, as if he could sense her presence. He could see her familiar shape beneath the old sheet. Her pose brought back a memory, a languid night in summer. Cutter walking into their room to find her lying in the bed, a single white sheet the only thing covering her body.

Cutter almost smiled, the reaction triggered by the memory. He choked it back and walked slowly forward.

Some of Rowen’s hair stuck out from beneath the sheet, and his eyes were drawn to the dark strands as he approached. He squatted down next to her, close enough to touch, but all he did was stare at the gentle curls lying against the pitted floorboards. Cutter reached out and gently touched them, no more than a graze of his fingertips against her hair.

He sat like this for a while, then he wrenched his gaze away and forced himself to look at her. What he had initially thought were black patterns on the sheet was actually blood that had seeped from her many wounds.

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