The bleeding shadow came quickly then. Across the floor and onto Tootie. He screamed. He screamed like someone having the flesh slowly burned off. Then the beast came through the door as if shot out of a cannon.
Tentacles slashed, a million feet scuttled, and those beaks came down, ripping at Tootie like a savage dog tearing apart a rag doll. Blood flew all over the room. It was like a huge strawberry exploded.
Then another thing happened. A blue mist floated up from the floor, from what was left of Tootie, and for just the briefest of moments, I saw Tootie’s face in that blue mist; the face smiled a toothless kind of smile, showing nothing but a dark hole where his mouth was. Then, like someone sniffing steam off soup, the blue mist was sucked into the beaks of that thing, and Tootie and his soul were done with.
The thing turned its head and looked at us. It made a noise like a thousand rocks and broken automobiles tumbling down a cliff made of gravel and glass, and it began to suck back toward the door. It went out with a sound like a wet towel being popped. The bleeding shadow ran across the floor after it, eager to catch up; a lapdog hoping for a treat.
The door slammed as the thing and its shadow went out, and then the air got clean and the room got bright.
I looked where Tootie had been.
Nothing.
Not a bone.
Not a drop of blood.
I raised the window and looked out.
It was morning.
No clouds in the sky.
The sun looked like the sun.
Birds were singing.
The air smelled clean as a newborn’s breath.
I turned back to Alma May. She was slowly getting up from where she had dropped to the floor.
“It just wanted him,” I said, having a whole different kind of feeling about Tootie than I had before. “He gave himself to it. To save you, I think.”
She ran into my arms and I hugged her tight. After a moment, I let go of her. I got the records and put them together. I was going to snap them across my knee. But I never got the chance. They went wet in my hands, came apart, and hit the floor and ran through the floorboards like black water, and that was all she wrote.
HUNGRY HEART
by Simon R. Green
New York Times bestseller Simon R. Green is the author of the eleven-volume Nightside paranormal series, which takes an intrepid PI to “the dark heart of London, where it’s always three A.M.” and monsters and creatures from myth and legend meet and mingle—and sometimes hire you to take on a dangerous job. The Nightside books include Something from the Nightside, Agents of Light and Darkness, Hex and the City, Hell to Pay, and seven others. Green has also written fantasy series such as the seven-volume Hawk and Fisher sequence (No Haven for the Guilty, Devil Take the Hindmost, The God Killer, and four others) and the three-volume Forest Kingdom sequence (Blue Moon Rising, Blood and Honor, Down Among the Dead Men), science fiction series such as the five-volume Deathstalker sequence (Deathstalker: Being the First Part of the Life and Times of Owen Deathstalker, Deathstalker War, and three others) and the related three-volume Deathstalker Legacy sequence (Deathstalker Legacy, Deathstalker Return, and Deathstalker Coda), and fantasy/spy story series such as the five-volume Secret Histories sequence (The Man with the Golden Torc, Daemons Are Forever, The Spy Who Haunted Me, From Hell With Love, and For Heaven’s Eyes Only). He also has written stand-alone novels such as Shadows Fall and Drinking Midnight Wine, and he has started a new paranormal series, Ghost Finders, with Ghost of a Chance and his most recent book, Ghost of a Smile.
Here private detective John Taylor, long accustomed to dealing with ghosts and wizards and ghouls in the Nightside, takes on his strangest case, that of a witch who lost her heart—and wants it back.
THE CITY OF LONDON HAS A HIDDEN HEART; A DARK AND SECRET PLACE where gods and monsters go fist-fighting through alleyways, where wonders and marvels are two a penny, where everything and everyone is up for sale, and all your dreams can come true. Especially the ones where you wake up screaming. In London’s Nightside it’s always dark, always three o’clock in the morning, the hour that tries men’s souls . . . and finds them wanting.
I WAS DRINKING WORMWOOD BRANDY IN THE OLDEST BAR IN THE WORLD when the femme fatale walked in. The bar was quiet, or at least as quiet as it ever gets. A bunch of female ghouls out on a hen night were getting tipsy on Mother’s Ruin and complaining about the quality of the finger buffet. Ghouls just want to have fun. A pair of Neanderthals who’d put away so many smart drinks they were practically evolving before my eyes. And four Emissaries from the Outer Dark were playing cutthroat bridge and cheating each other blind. Just another night at Strangefellows—until she walked in.
She came striding between the tables with her head held high, as though she owned the place, or at the very least was planning a hostile takeover. She slammed to a halt before my table, gave me a big smile, and let me look her over. A tall, slender platinum blonde, late teens, Little Black Dress . . . big eyes, big smile, industrial-strength makeup. Attractive enough, in an intimidating sort of way. An English rose with more than her fair share of thorns. She introduced herself in a light breathy voice and sat down opposite me without waiting to be asked. She tried her smile on me again. On anyone else, it would probably have worked.
“You’re John Taylor, private investigator,” she said briskly. “I’m Holly Wylde, and I’m a witch. My ex stole my heart. I want you to find it, and get it back for me.”
Not the strangest thing I’ve ever been asked to find, but I felt obliged to raise an eyebrow.
“I’m being quite literal,” she said. “All witches learn how to remove their hearts, and keep them safe and secure in some private place, so that no one can ever fully kill us. As long as the heart stays safe, we always come back. Hardly sporting, I know, but if I believed in things like fair play I’d never have become a witch in the first place. My ex, bad cess to his diseased soul, used to be my mentor. Taught me all I know about magic, and rogered me breathless every evening at no extra cost. Gideon Brooks; perhaps you know the name?”
“No,” I said. “Which is unusual. I know all the Major Players in the Nightside, all the real movers and shakers on the magical scene; but I don’t know him.”
She shrugged prettily. “When it comes to forbidden knowledge, Gideon is the reason why a lot of it is forbidden. A very powerful, very dangerous man, on the quiet. Anyway, I thought we were getting on splendidly. But when I decided I’d learned enough to leave Gideon and strike out on my own, he suddenly got all possessive on me. I thought we were just mentor and student, with benefits, but now he’s all over me, declaring his undying love and how he can’t live without me! Well. I was shocked, Mister Taylor. I don’t do emotional entanglements. Not at this stage in my career. I tried to be graceful about it, but there’s only so many ways a girl can say ‘No!’ in a loud and carrying voice. So. After a while he calmed down, apologized, and said he was just worried about me. Which was fair enough. But then he persuaded me to hand over my heart, so he could place some heavy-duty protections on it, to keep me safe once I was out on my own. And like a fool, I believed him. He has my heart, Mister Taylor, and he won’t give it back! And whoever owns a witch’s heart will always have power over her. I’ll never be free of him.”