Eidolon Read Online Free

her
aristocratic bearing. “I thought my cousin might try some trickery such as
this. Conniving bitch.” he said. “Put down the lantern and hold up your hands.”
    The beam of light shining through the broken shutter turned
into a mere thread as we obeyed him.
    “You have something which belongs to her,” I said, careful
to keep any hint of censure or fear from my tone, lest I set him off. “She
wished to do you the courtesy of not involving the police and asked me come in
their stead.”
    “Did she send you with a bag of money? No? Then shut up.”
His mouth twisted into an ugly scowl. “She won’t involve the police. Not after
what I saw in her house.”
    The last light from the sun vanished, leaving behind only
the glow of the lantern. “Listen to us—” Whyborne began.
    Something giggled on the other side of the window.
    It wasn’t the sound of a child’s mirth or a young woman’s.
The laugh was corrupt somehow, cold and sneering and twisted. Every hair rose
on my arms and the back of my neck.
    “Wh-who’s there?” Nivens stared at the window. “I’ve got
your friends in here, and if you want to see them alive again, you’d best stop
playing tricks now!”
    A scratching came at the shutters, making me think of
broken, dirt-caked nails. The scraping continued, up the window, along the
wall, and onto the roof, as if something outside pried at the tiles in an
attempt to gain entrance.
    “For God’s sake, man, give us the talisman!” Whyborne
exclaimed.
    Nivens had blanched white, his eyes round and horrible.
“God, oh God, it’s true, it’s true,” he babbled. The gun shook wildly in his
hands.
    I lunged at him, wrapping my fingers around the hand holding
his gun and forcing it to the side. My other fist I buried in the soft flesh of
his stomach.
    The gun went flying. I shoved him hard into the wall. “The talisman!”
I barked into his terrified face. “Where is it?”
    “The green vase on the mantle! I dropped it inside!” he
wailed.
    Whyborne immediately snatched the vase in question from the
mantle and thrust his hand inside. A moment later, he drew out a hideous talisman.
The thing looked to have been crudely shaped from clay, and its rough outline
resembled a bat-winged dog. But the leering face had a repellently human aspect,
such that my first instinct was to dash it from Whyborne’s hand before it could
do him some harm.
    “Ugh,” Whyborne said, eyeing it distastefully before
depositing it in his jacket pocket. “Plainly, Miss Lester doesn’t wish it
returned for its aesthetic qualities.”
    “Come on.” I thrust Nivens away and made for the front door.
“Let’s just take it back where it belongs.”
    The scratching sound had ceased, but I paused for a long
moment, listening carefully. Drawing my revolver, I stepped out into the street
and peered up at the roof. Nothing met my gaze, so I motioned Whyborne out
after me. “Quick—let’s find a cab. We’ll return the talisman and still be
in time for the curtain to rise.”
    “The what?”
    Blast. “Never mind. Just follow me.”
    The gas lamps along the street flickered wildly within their
glass enclosures. A freak wind, surely, although how wind would even begin to
suffice as an explanation I didn’t know.
    Thank providence, the familiar clop of hooves and clatter of
harness came from the cross-street just ahead. A cab appeared, and I called out
for the driver to wait.
    The lights on the street went out all at once. From the
darkness above us, something giggled.
    The horse went wild, letting out a terrible sound of fear.
Its eyes rolled, showing white, and it plunged away, heedless of the shouts of
the driver.
    No. No, damn it, no! There came a flap from above us, like
the membrane of a vast wing. We had to run, to return the blasted talisman, but
the Lester house lay halfway across the city, near the burying ground on
Cemetery Road. I doubted my ability to run so far, and as for Whyborne, he
already wheezed and