Read Online James Asher 1 - Those Who Hunt The Night by Barbara Hambly - Free Book Online

James' handkerchief, and held them to the slowly brightening light of the window. Third and fourth cervical, badly charred and oddly decomposed, but, as James had described, the scratch on the bone was clearly visible. “There must be tissue repair of some kind, you know,” she went on, wetting her finger to rub some of the soot away, “if Don Simon's burns 'took years to heal.' I wonder what causes the combustion? Though there are stories of spontaneous human combustion happening in very rare instances to quite ordinary people—if they were ordinary, of course. Did you get a look at the coffin lining? Was it burned away, too?”
    Asher's thick brows pulled together as he narrowed his eyes, trying to call back the details of that silent charnel house. He hadn't had medical training, but, Lydia had found, he had the best eye for detail she had ever encountered in a world that ignored so much. He would be that way, she thought, even if his life hadn't depended on it for so many years.
    “Not burned away, no,” he said after a moment. “The lining at the bottom was corroded and stained, almost down to the wood; charred and stained to a few inches above where the body would come on the sides. The clothes, flesh, and hair had been entirely destroyed.”
    “Color of the stains?”
    He shook his head. “I couldn't see by lantern light.”
    “Hmm.” She paused in thought, then began patting and shaking the pillows, comforter, and beribboned froth of shams around her, looking for her magnifying glass—she was sure she'd been using it to peruse some dissecting-room drawings the other night in bed.
    “Night stand?” Asher suggested helpfully. She fished it out to look more closely at the third cervical.
    “This was done with one stroke.” She held it out—he leaned across to take it and the glass and studied it in his turn. “Something very sharp, with a drawing stroke: a cleaver or a surgical knife. Something made for cutting bone. Whoever used it knew what he was doing.”
    “And wasn't about to lose his nerve over severing a woman's head,” Asher added thoughtfully, setting aside the bone. “He'd already killed three other vampires, of course. Presumably whatever started him on his hunt for vampires was enough to overcome his revulsion, if he felt any, the first time—and after that, he'd have proof that they do in fact exist and must be destroyed.” As he spoke, he tugged gently on the faded silk ribbons of the old reticule, coaxing it open in a dry whisper of cracking silk.
    “Surely the mere circumstances of their loved one's death would have proved that.” When James didn't answer, she looked up from examining the oddly dissolved-looking bone. What she saw in his face—in his eyes, like a burned-on reflection of things he had seen—caused the same odd little lightening within her that she'd felt when she was four and had awakened in the night to realize there was a huge rat in her room and that it was between her and the door.
    Slowly he said, “If that's the reason behind the killings, yes. But I think there's more to it than that—and I don't know what. If Ysidro's telling the truth, vampires can generally see ordinary mortals coming,” if he was telling the truth. It might have been a lie to make you keep your distance, you know.“ She shook one long, delicate finger at him and mimicked, ” 'Don't you try nuthin' wi' me, bucko, 'cos we'll see you comin',' "
    “You haven't seen him in action.” The somberness fled from his eyes as he grinned at himself. “That's the whole point, I suppose: nobody sees them in action. But no. I believe him. His senses are preternaturally sharp—he can count the people in a train coach by the sound of their breathing, see in the dark . . . Yet the whole time I was with him, I could feel him listening to the wind. I've seen men do that when they think they're being followed, but can't be sure. He hides it well, but he's afraid.”
    “Well, it does serve him