Read Blood Lust: A Supernatural Horror for Free Online Page A

descending on me. Before I could react, something or someone hit me in the back with sufficient force to send me hurtling through the air like a punted football . I landed ten feet away , skidd ing painfully face down across the filthy stone tile floor. I felt the weight of someone heavy standing over me , pressing me i nto the floor; then a sharp pain exploded in my right shoulder. The pressure mounted, crushing my chest into the floor until I thought I w ould pass out.
    “Tack!”
    When Lew yelled out my name, t he pressure lessened, and then disappeared . I rolled over quickly, clumsily trying to draw my weapon with my injure d arm but my assailant was gone , vanished . Dimly, out of my watering eyes, I saw Lew rushing down the nave with gun in hand , sweeping it back and forth across the empty nave searching for my assailant .
    “Are you all right?” he yelled out still scanning the room for intruders .
    I considered his question for a moment to decide how best to answer as my burning lungs gulped down ragged gasps of breath . My shoulder was on fire, my bruised ribs screamed for attention and my chin and forehead were bloody and scraped from the slide across the floor.
    “I’ll live,” I answered truthfully. “Did you see the bastard?”
    He shook his head. “I glimpsed a shadow but it was gone before I could see anything. What the hell happened?”
    “Somebody fell on me like a ton of bricks. Son of a bitch stabbed me in the shoulder.” I looked around the nave. “ He could be hiding in any shadow. Let’s find him.” I stood shakily and winced as my bruised ribs sent a spasm of pain shooting through my body .
    Lew took one side of the sanctuary and I took the other. The front door was locked and chained. There was no way our phantom had escaped that way. I peered into abandoned nooks and empty alcoves and warily circled columns but found no one. Lew and I met at the door through which we had entered.
    “Nothing,” he said with a shrug .
    I rubbed my chin , succeeding it getting it dirty as well as bloody. I wiped my ha nd on m y pants. “There are no other doors he could have used. No windows. Where the hell is he?”
    “I swear he didn’t use this door, but…” He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
    I walked back to the apse , slowly, wincing in pain as I massaged my right shoulder. My hand came away wet from blood seeping though my jacket. I pointed t o the altar. “I found ou r missing girls, I think.”
    He sniffed, made a d our face and nodded in agreement . “I’ll call it in.”
    While Lew walked around searching for a hot spot for his cell phone, I scanned the nave and the corners of the transept , finding no place an assailant could hide. He could have used the shadows to reach the door through which we entered undetected, but he would have to be extremely fleet of foot to do so. Satisfied he was no longer in the building, I turned my attention to the apse.
    It was a sickening sight ; one that almost brought me to tears . Three bodies lay sprawled on the floor in various degrees of decomposition . T he latest victim, Patricia Stewart, look ed almost asleep except for her wide-open , staring, unseeing eyes and her unnaturally pale complexion. Her skin seemed loose on her face , her cheeks sunk en in . Her savaged neck revealed a ragged wound r unning laterally from the front of her throat to the nape of her neck , exposing the ghostly white of her cervical vertebrae . The other two bodies had not fared as well . Rodents had been busy gnaw ing their dead flesh. Flies buzzed around the bodies and maggots writhed in open wounds. Pools of congealed blood mixed with recent rainwater formed vile puddles around the bodies. The stench was powerful, the sight gruesome. As I fought down the urge to throw up, I wondered what kind of person could do this to another human being. I wished I had been able to get off a shot at my assailant, whom I was certain was also our killer . It would save the