Read As Red as Blood (The Snow White Trilogy) for Free Online

told him it was coming at the usual time but a different place.”
    The Estonian was starting to really wake up now.
    Boris grunted. “He said something about a misunderstanding. That yesterday was leap day and the last day of the month.”
    He tapped his fingers on the windowsill. Had the rabbits been gnawing at the apple tree? He would have to rig up some sort of fencing around it. Or keep watch some night and score a couple of rabbit roasts for the freezer. His own freezer this time.
    “Yeah, yeah, but the twenty-eighth doesn’t turn into the twenty-ninth because of leap year. And why the hell was he waiting up tonight when we already delivered the money yesterday?”
    “That’s just it. He says we didn’t. That he hasn’t seen anything. Nada.”
    The Estonian was silent for a moment. Boris waited to see whether his underling would come to the same conclusion he had.
    “He’s bullshitting us. He did get the money. He just realized what happened to it, and now he’s trying to play hardball.”
    Yep, same conclusion.
    “The little shit tried to threaten me. He said he’d expose everything.”
    Boris felt himself getting angry again just saying the words. He squeezed the cell phone, imagining the crunch of a cockroach exoskeleton in his fist.
    “But I’ll burn in hell before I see that!”
    The Estonian was furious too. Good. They were firmly on the same side. Two backsliders within the past thirty-eight hours was enough. No, it was too much. Two too many. A working machine could only lose so many parts at a time without repairs.
    “We’re going to make sure he doesn’t talk.”
    Boris said the words with relish. No one threatened him without repercussions. No one bullshitted him and got away with it.
    He had thought a plastic bag full of bloody cash would have been sufficient warning.
    Apparently not.
    But he knew how to play hardball too. The difference was he would win.
    Terho Väisänen knew there was no way he was going to fall back asleep. He lay on one side of the queen-sized bed, even though he could have stretched out across the whole mattress if he’d wanted to. He felt as if someone were whittling the bed frame out from under him and that, at any moment, he might collapse onto the floor, which would also give way. Something was crumbling, something he had thought would last.
    Terho Väisänen couldn’t say he was proud of himself. There were mornings when he had a hard time looking himself in the eye, but usually the feeling went away by the time he got to work and remembered how much good he had done over the past ten years. How many cases had been solved solely thanks to him? That kind of success rate had its price, but so be it.
    Pulling the covers up around his neck, he sniffed the fresh scent of the duvet cover. He wished he could hug someone, hold someone warm tight in his arms.
    Terho tried to call one more time. The phone rang and rang, but no one answered. Terho felt a vague fear taking root somewhere around his solar plexus. He had a feeling that, after tonight, everything would be different.

Once upon a time, there was a night that never ended. With its darkness, it devoured the sun, strangling all light and spreading its cold, black hands over the earth. The night glued the eyes of humanity shut eternally, making dreams deeper and stranger, making man and woman alike forget themselves and glide along arm in arm with imagined creatures, losing their own memories. On the walls of the buildings, the night painted its most terrifying pictures, from which all color had fled. On the faces of the sleeping populace, the night breathed cold, suffocating air, which invaded the lungs, turning them black inside.
    Gasping, Lumikki opened her eyes. She was covered in sweat, and the weight of her quilt felt like it was choking her throat. She had to throw it off and sit up. Feet shoved intoslippers. Over to the window to look out across the park, a familiar scene that could soften the rock-hard