Ghost Stalker Read Online Free Page B

from the truck, pausing only to slam the door in his face. She kept both hands on the metal exterior as she stared in horror through the closed window.
    So much for the truce they had forged. It seemed that Skinwalkers were not the only ones who could not be trusted.
     
    Nick woke in the arms of a barrel-chested man whose booming baritone voice ordered someone to hold the door.
    “Jessie, I don’t care what your friend said. This here’s a damned wolf.”
    “He’s gentle, I swear,” she said, vouching for his character.
    “Folk round don’t patch wolves. They shoot ’em.”
    “Well, I want him patched.”
    “Car hit him?”
    Nick was swung through the door and carried pastrows of plastic chairs. The scent of cat, urine, dog and ferret all assaulted him in a nauseating wave of odor and he did not hear her answer.
    She hadn’t abandoned him, then. What had changed her mind?
    “What happened to his face?”
    “I don’t know. But his ribs are broken.”
    “Tangled with a bear, maybe. Sure you don’t want to just put him out of his misery?”
    Was it the real purpose of this visit? Nick started to struggle but the man simply tightened his stranglehold. Nick’s injuries made him weak, too weak to transform again.
    Behind him, Jessie Healy’s voice rang with adamancy. “Absolutely not!”
    “Might be expensive.”
    “Just do it.”
    Nick liked the sharp ring of authority in her tone. They laid him on his side on a cold metal table that stank of disinfectant and fear. The vet had his back to him for a moment. When he turned, he held a huge needle.
    Nick scrambled, but the vet grasped the scruff of his neck.
    “Hold him, Jess.”
    She laid trembling hands on his hip and he stilled instantly, feeling the assault of stubborn resolve that was not his own. Was he crazy? She was Niyanoka and his interests were not the same as hers. She had given her word, but she had given it to a creature who she considered to be her inferior and her enemy. Panicrushed like fire through his veins and he tried to rise to his feet.
    Nick felt the pinch as the needle punctured his scruff. There was a burning and then his legs went out from under him.

 

    Chapter 4
     
    N agi was still in possession of the young man’s body when the ghosts arrived, all three of them, pulsing weakly and stinking of failure. Rage ripped through him as the excuses began. They had located him in the living world, where he came to collect errant ghosts for his circle. But tonight he was attending to a very personal matter which they were interrupting.
    He led them outdoors to the cool, familiar darkness of the night and did not stop until he was well away from the house. There, beneath the shimmering canopy of silver stars, he paused to face them.
    “My lord and master,” said the first, “we did as you bid and attacked the Tracker and—”
    The arsonist interrupted, “But we did not kill him, as you commanded.”
    The third said nothing.
    The first continued as if the others were not there. “And we allowed him to escape before following.”
    “Then why are you here, groveling like sick dogs?”
    The arsonist became more transparent. “He did not go to the Healer.”
    “What!” Nagi extended his human arms, sending a shock wave forward with such force it threw all three ghosts back into a series of somersaults. The only thing that kept him from casting them to the very bottom of his circle was the need for more answers.
    “Where is he?” Nagi shouted.
    The first ghost’s voice faltered. “H-he found a Dream Walker.”
    Nagi glared. Why would an Inanoka travel to an enemy when a friend could heal him? He fixed his gaze on the center ghost, the one who thought killing his wife would keep her from loving another. Why did he not speak?
    And then he understood. Holding the fury at bay, he spoke to the third specter.
    The icy calm brought the vibrating forms before him to stillness. “You warned him, didn’t you?”
    “We didn’t, my lord,”