The House of Doors - 01 Read Free Page A

brown-tipped—utterly repulsive. He forced himself to weigh the left one in his hand. Incredibly massive; heavy; full of blood; but the temperature so low it seemed impossible that life—
    “Hot!” she gasped, breaking his chain of thought. For the first time she’d felt his body heat. “Why, you’re like a furnace! Have ye got the hots for me, then?”
    Her long-fingered hand shifted from his chest, slipped down the front of Bannerman to the zip of his trousers, lowered it in a smooth, practised movement. A moment later she said, “No underpants! Were ye perhaps expectin’ something?” She chuckled coarsely—and froze. He felt the fingers of her cold, searching hand stiffen. For down there in the crotch of his legs she’d found nothing! Just hot, smooth, featureless flesh, like the inner contours of a sharply bent elbow.
    “Jesus!” she cried, leaping from the recess in the wall, her breasts swinging free. “Oh, sweet Je—”
    Her pursuers were in the alley, creeping there. One of them grabbed her from behind, one hand over her mouth and the other fumbling roughly at her breasts. “Heard us coming for ye, did ye?” he whispered, his voice a threat in itself.
    While she kicked and snorted through her nose, the second man lit a cigarette and held his lighter close to the alcove. Its flaring light caught Bannerman there, coat unbuttoned and fly open. “Laddie,” said this one. “We’re not much round here for strangers feelin’ free with our women. Now you’d best hold your breath, son, for ye’re about to lose your ba’s!”
    He snapped his lighter shut and lashed out with his left foot, driving it straight to Bannerman’s groin. In the next moment, clenching his heavy lighter tightly in a balled fist to stiffen it and give it weight, the thug swung for Bannerman’s face. The blows were delivered as swiftly as that—one, two—exactly where they were aimed.
    Thrown back by the force and suddenness of the attack, Bannerman snatched what looked like a fountain pen from his top pocket.
    The girl had meanwhile broken free. The man who had held her tried to strike her in the face but missed his aim. Her fingernails had opened up the side of his face in straight red lines. At first she gasped for breath, but then she started to shout. But not for help. She shouted at the men:
    “Leave him! For God’s sake leave him be— or he’ll have ye!” Animals they might be—but they were human animals. Then she turned and fled into the night.
    “Oh, a big-yin, is it?” said the one with the threatening whisper and the bleeding face. “Well then, let’s be seeing the bastard!” He reached into the alcove, caught hold of Bannerman’s lapels and bunched the material in a huge scarred fist.
    His friend, however, had drawn back a little. When he’d kicked the stranger and struck him, Bannerman hadn’t gasped or cried out. He hadn’t even grunted. He should be on his knees, crippled, but he wasn’t.
    “Out ye come,” said the one holding Bannerman’s coat. “Out here where we can stomp on ye a bit and—” He jerked his arm out of the alcove, but Bannerman didn’t come with it. Neither did the thug’s hand. Severed at the wrist, his stump sprayed his companion’s face with hot blood.
    Then Bannerman came out. He breathed and his breath whooshed like a great bellows. His eyes glowed internally, swinging like searchlight beams to scan the men and the alley. Something gleamed in his hand and made a soft whirring sound. He swung that something in an arc and opened up the one who had struck him in a curving line across the chest.
    Bannerman’s weapon sliced through clothing and the man wearing it down to a depth of five inches. It slid through skin, flesh, cartilage, ribs, heart, lungs, with as little effort as an egg slicer. His victim didn’t draw another breath; he was dead before he sagged to the cobbles; his companion was still gaping in disbelief at his own crimson-spurting stump.
    Bannerman