Priestess of Murder Read Online Free Page B

the weapon from
it. Its metallic gleam sliced into the underbrush and the antagonists came
together with a thud of flesh against flesh that was thunderous to the
terrified girl.
    Stan's fists pumped, two flashing pistons, into Calban's taut belly. The
monster's muscle-bulging arms clamped around the trooper in a rib-cracking
clinch. They swayed, black and gigantic in the eerie forest light and from
the taut, straining agony of that clinch burst an appalling cacophony of
bestial sounds, of growls and vicious snarls.
    A shrill, piercing squeal forced by unendurable pain from a strong man's
lips galvanized Leila into action. She dropped to her knees, searching
frantically in the meshed, baffling underbrush for Stan's gun. The tumult of
that eerie battle increased, behind her. A chattering, mindless scream
signaled that Stan had got home a telling blow.
    "Run, Leila," the man yelled. "Get away. I can't—hold him."
    The girl twisted, saw Calban, momentarily driven away from Stan, closing
in again. Her lover met the renewed attack by a ferocious uppercut exploding
from a crouch. His fist landed on the monster's jaw with the blast of a rifle
shot, his other fist crashed against the brute's chest. The devastating blows
might have been flicks of a fly's wings for all the effect they had. Calban
was not even staggered. His huge paw closed on Corbett's neck, engulfing it
with its vast span. His swarthy other hand drove for the man's groin.
    Somehow a thick stick was in Leila's hand and she was hurling herself,
shrilling primitive fury, at the monster. Her improvised club pounded against
Calban's forehead. He roared, with anger rather than pain, and the hand that
was reaching for Stan's groin flicked sidewise instead.
    It struck Leila in midair, catapulted her backward, crashing her into the
threshing cushion of a bush. Jarred and half-stunned, she saw Calban's attack
focus again on Stan, saw her lover swept from his feet, saw him lifted high
above the grisly creature's head by straining arms shaggy with a beast's
black hair.
    The terrible tableau etched itself on Leila's mind. The gorilla-like
brute; his bestial ferocity the more horrible for the fact that he was no
beast but a man degraded, obscenely decadent; poised momentarily motionless
as he gathered his forces for the throw that would smash Stan to a pulp.
Above his head Stan was as motionless—rigid and helpless in the
gigantic grip of Calban's leathery hands at armpit and crotch, his face
contorted and pallid, his eyes staring in agony.
    For an eternal moment that awful pause persisted. And then the lurid gleam
of Calban's beady, savage eyes flared more redly and the muscles in his huge
arms writhed snakelike beneath their hairy skin, and Leila knew that in the
next instant they would sweep downward.
    From somewhere a whistle shrilled high and piercing, through the quivering
terror of the woods. It came again, the strange high sound that once before
Leila had heard through black clouds of death swirling about herself. It
froze Calban to an astounding paralysis, leashed him as though it were a
chain writhing about his savage limbs. Leila could almost see the
death-thought seep unwilling from the black and terrible frame.
    Calban's protest was a grisly roar blasting through the black forest
aisles. The huge arms bent, slowly, reluctantly, letting Stan down.
    The trooper twisted abruptly, freed himself from Calban's loosening grip.
He thudded to the ground, sprang erect, snarling...
    But the monster was gone, had plunged away into the veiling thickets. For
minutes the lovers heard the threshing of his huge, evil body moving away,
and then a sinister silence close about them. A silence sinister because it
cloaked not only the ravening man-beast, but another mysterious entity, a
lurking, invisible being who was master of the Monster, whose whistling
command the brute obeyed even in the height of his frenzy. Twice Leila had
heard the