Priestess of Murder Read Online Free

staggering form just ahead of Leila, always just
ahead, always just about to drop, but somehow keeping on her feet, somehow
maintaining a little space between them. The reason for her chase slid away
from Leila. She knew only that she must catch the luminous wraith she
pursued, knew only that she must keep going through the nightmare blackness
of the impeding forest. Knew only that the uncanny compulsion was upon
her—
    A denser grouping of stygian tree-trunks swallowed Eve for an instant.
Leila plunged through them—stopped. Eve had disappeared. She wasn't
anywhere in sight, and there was no sound to tell where she had gone.
    Had she, after, been pursuing a phantom created by her own mad brain? Was
she doomed forever to wander in a dreamland of dread in which she would be
unable to distinguish the real from the unreal? Doomed forever—see,
these very trees seemed instinct with a baleful life. They seemed to be
closing in on her.
    One of them was moving, was coming toward her with a slow,
infinitely evil deliberation. It couldn't be moving! She was imagining it.
How could a tree move?
    It wasn't a tree. It was a bent, massive figure of a man; huge, browless
head set neckless on gargantuan shoulders; bronzed, naked torso gleaming
eerily in the moonlight; little, pig-like eyes glowing redly out of an
imbecilic, drooling countenance. It was the Monster of the Cliff!
    But she had killed the Monster. No, that was Foster Corbett she had
killed. This Monster didn't exist. It was a figment of her imagination, this
bestial thing that crept inexorably toward her. It wasn't there at all and
she wouldn't run from it. If she didn't run from it it would vanish and she
would be sane again. She must not be afraid of it. She must not be afraid of
the big-muscled arms that seemed to reach out for her, of the stubbed and
fearful talons.
    That closed on her arms with a sudden, fearful pain that told her the
thing was real. That told her too late that it was real.
    Leila screamed, but the shrill cry of her terror and her agony was drowned
by the ferocious, overwhelming roar of the Monster. Towering over her, he
slammed her against the shaggy, unyielding bark of a giant tree behind her,
trying to crush her, it seemed, into the very heart of the quivering timber,
driving breath from her so that she could scream no longer.
    She could not scream, but she could flail desperate fists against the
steel-hard thews of his giant arms. The beast laughed at her puny
efforts—chatteringly, gibberingly. His black-lipped mouth opened to
display yellow, rotted fangs, a cavity in which the flesh was not red but a
hideous black.
    Leila writhed, jerked free. Almost jerked free. The Monster's knee came
up, thrust excruciatingly into the softness of her abdomen, pinned her
helpless against the rough tree-bark behind that cut through her flimsy dress
and stabbed her with countless tiny points. Pinned her helpless, so that one
of his bestial paws released its grip and flew to the neckline of her frock.
It tore downward, as the seamed, hairless countenance mowed with insensate,
obscene glee.
    "Pretty," the thing chattered. "Pretty," and his leathery palm fumbled at
Leila's breast, rasped it with a lewd caress. "Calban likes."
    The girl's hand spatted against the indurated cheek, her toes banged at
the Monster's shins. He squealed like a stuck pig and his fingers flew to her
throat, clutched it, constricted.
    Leila's lungs pumped unavailingly, fighting for air they could not find.
The brutal digits tightened still more, till the girl thought they must cut
right through the flesh, must squeeze clear through her neck. Knives stabbed
and twisted within her chest, invisible fingers gouged at her eyes. The
glaring, ferocious visage of her tormentor vanished in a great, roaring
blackness.
    Through which she seemed to hear a high, piercing whistle. The roaring in
her skull was drowned in the blast of Calban's feral roar. The