The Golem of Paris Read Free Page A

withdrawing a black-and-brown Makarov pistol. He flicks off the safety and stands up.
    “Not the boy,” she says.
    “Of course the boy,” he says, and he shoots Daniel.
    Daniel collapses, shins bent under thighs, a black hole oozing in his forehead.
    “Of course the boy,” the Russian says. “That is the whole point.”
    She cannot find the air to cry out or the energy to move, and she knows without a doubt that he is right, she is doomed, they all are, because at least she ought to be able to summon a sense of outrage, but there is nothing, she feels nothing.
    Gun in one hand, jar and lid in the other, the Russian stands with his eyes raised to the garret door, his lips moving like a housewife making a shopping list, murmuring.
    After a while, he frowns at her. “My hat.”
    She stares at him.
    “Take it off, please.”
    She does not move.
    “I do not want to soil it,” the Russian says.
    She does not move.
    “Never mind,” he says.
    He shoots her in the chest.
    Flattened against the frozen stones, she tastes the warm salty gush rising from her ruined heart. The clouds briefly part, and then the Russian’s winged shape looms forth to eclipse the moon.
    •   •   •
    H E WAITS FOR HER EYES TO DULL , then turns and watches the door, chanting softly.
    Nothing.
    He studies the whore’s body. Still alive? To be absolutely certain, he shoots her a second time, slightly to the left. Her blouse shreds.
    He looks up. Nothing.
    Well, one can only try.
    Try, and try, and try again.
    Mindful of an irritating throb, he loosens his scarf to give his skin some air, probes the rising cairn of flesh. He tucks his gun in his waistband, sighs wearily, and kneels to rewrap the jar.
    Freezing in horror.
    The lid is cracked—a thin black line from edge to edge.
    When did
that
happen?
    He must have set it down too hard.
    He was trying to do too many things at once. He only has two hands.
    It’s typical. He was sloppy, overeager, careless, an idiot.
    He falls down onto his tailbone, rocking, shaking with rage.
    Idiot, idiot, clumsy idiot, see what you’ve done, the mess you’ve made; stop crying, insolent little shit, don’t stare at the ground, be a man and look at me, look me in the eye, look at me,
look
.

CHAPTER TWO
    H igh in the garret above, through brick, and wood, and clay, seeps the gray.
    She feels it before she sees it: an icy press, foul and consuming, rushing in like poisoned floodwaters to pry open her many thousand eyes, rousing her to fury, limbs stirring, writhing, wriggling.
    She opens her armor, spreads her wings, takes flight.
    It lasts one glorious moment and then she crashes into the clay ceiling.
    She lands awkwardly, legs bent in six incompatible directions. Even with no one around to see it, it’s more humiliating than painful.
    Hissing, she rights herself for another try and once more bounces back as though swatted by a giant hand.
    Now the pain is real.
    On the bowl of her back, she rocks from side to side, managing to flop onto her belly. Flapping her wings slowly, she ascends cautiously in captive space until she touches a solid surface, the roof of her prison, river mud hardened to ceramic.
    Tucking her legs in, she braces herself.
    Pushes.
    It is like arguing with a cliff. She struggles and struggles and meanwhile the gray has begun to drain, taking her strength with it, time running down.
    No.
    Abandoning caution, she begins slamming herself upward, again and again and again, at last settling on her side, exhausted, gutted by pain, shell split clean open, bleeding, jaws bent, wings shredded, watching the air as it steadily quiets, her eyes closing a hundred at a time.
    Noting with satisfaction, before all goes black, a pale, slim fissure, a crack in the darkness of clay.

CHAPTER THREE
    LAPD CHIEF AUGUST M. VOLLMER MEMORIAL ARCHIVE
    EL MONTE, CALIFORNIA
    PRESENT DAY
    D etective Jacob Lev tracked the insect as it descended from the darkness between the rafters. The closer it came, the