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- Herausgeber: Al-Mashreq eBookstore
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Serie: Dime Mystery Magazine
- Sprache: Englisch
Death's Mistress by Arthur Leo Zagat is a haunting tale of dark allure and sinister obsession. In this spine-tingling story, a beautiful yet mysterious woman enters the lives of those around her, bringing death and despair in her wake. As men fall under her spell, they are drawn into a web of danger from which there is no escape. With each passing day, the body count rises, and the true nature of this enigmatic femme fatale is revealed. Will anyone survive the deadly embrace of Death's Mistress, or is it already too late? Prepare yourself for a journey into the shadows where beauty and terror collide.
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Seitenzahl: 52
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Table of Contents
Death's Mistress
I. — IT LURKS AT NIGHT
II. — THE MURDER GUN
III. — KILLER'S KISS
IV. — DEATH IN COMMAND
Landmarks
Table of Contents
Cover
Death's Mistress
I. — IT LURKS AT NIGHT
OFFICER JOHN HAYDEN shrugged big shoulders as if the stiff cloth of his tunic bothered him, but his uneasiness had nothing to do with the fit of his uniform. Something in the wee-hour stillness of Exterior Street was getting him, something ominous in the black loom of the freighters squeezed between pier sides, in the continual lap-lap of greasy water against their hulls, distinct in the silence. The bay seemed to have a million tongues tonight, and each one whispered a warning.
A warning of what? Hayden's narrowed eyes slid along the deserted expanse of cobbles he patrolled. Illuminated patches hugged the wide-spaced street lamps closely. Between them shadows lay heavily...
The officer's unquiet glance roved to the right, skimmed blank facades of dingy warehouses, paused hesitantly at the black maw of an alley. He knew he ought to take a look in Acre, yet a curious reluctance restrained him. Anything, almost anything might be hidden in that tar-barrel murk!
Hayden shrugged again. "Hell of a cop I am," he muttered half-aloud. "Ye'd think I was a rookie doin' his first twelve-to-eight tour." He swerved toward the alley mouth, digging into a pocket for his flashlight; but his other hand took a tighter grip on his nightstick... There was a prickle of cold across the back of his neck as he sensed, rather than saw, a flicker of movement within the alley toward which he slowly thudded.
His torch-beam shot out. Crazily-leaning wooden walls leapt into being. The light-disk danced along scummed flag-stones, broken and up-ended, probed a pile of heaped refuse, moved further back—and was suddenly notched by a heavy-soled shoe, the blue hem of a trouser-leg. It stopped, quivered a bit, moved again, held in the center of its luminance a prostrate, oddly twisted form in a police uniform! The body lay face down in the alley filth; one arm was flung over the sprawled figure's head, and at its end a revolver barrel snouted.
Hayden's jaw hardened. His stick beat a rapid tattoo on the sidewalk, then he was plunging forward, cat-footed, toward the thing in there while his flash-beam stabbed into emptiness beyond.
The cop reached the unmoving form of his comrade, stood half-crouched above it. His eyes followed the lance of his light. Neither sight nor sound betrayed any living presence in the alley, but through the multifarious salty odors of the sea-breeze a faintly acrid tang stung his nostrils, a pungency that was somehow alien, exotic. It pulled his gaze down again to the body at his feet, and something he had been unable to see from the alley mouth struck the blood from his lips.
The fallen cop's hand, the fingers that gripped the butt of his useless gun, were brown, shriveled—had the texture and sheen of old parchment! The nails were blackened, curled oddly outward.
"God!" Hayden groaned, and dropped to his knees in the slime. He touched the strangely discolored hand with a tentative thumb, snatched it away as a crackle like that of dried tissue paper came startlingly loud in the silence. But the sere feel of withered skin clung to his fingertips, and the hardness of bone beneath. "God," the cop said again, in a hushed, shocked voice.
A hot spot of wrath burned in Hayden's skull at the same time that his skin crawled with unacknowledged fear. There was no whisper of sound in the alley as he pulled air into tightened lungs; but he felt eyes upon him—hot, inimical eyes. His light toured the narrow passage; slid along blank, windowless walls; skimmed mildewed, debris-strewn paving. There was nothing there, nothing!
"Good Lord," he grunted. "Why in hell don't Fred come? He oughta heard my raps and snapped into it pronto." Officer Fred Kane's beat ended only half a block from here and the two always timed themselves to relieve the tedium of the dawn patrol with mumbling talk. Hayden fumbled for his whistle; his dropping glance went almost furtively to the body's shriveled hand. And he gasped!
A tiny movement, when he had touched it perhaps, had pulled back the sleeve, revealing flat silver links of a wrist-watch band and the watch itself. Hayden stared pop-eyed at the odd, octagonal timepiece and his mouth worked. He knew that watch, had compared it numberless times with his own. It belonged to Fred Kane, to his buddy, his side-partner through half a decade of sidewalk pounding! But only an hour ago he had been chatting with Fred...
The policeman forced his arm to move, his hand to touch the flattened shoulder of the corpse, pressing it so that the head rolled limply and he could see its face. Its face! Good God! That which stared sightlessly at him was the face of no human thing!
The skin, brown and shriveled like that of a long-dried apple, had fallen into cheek-hollows, as if there were no flesh beneath. Blackened lips were retracted from stained teeth. The nose-tip was gone, the nostrils had vanished and their cartilage had shrunk tightly closed. Lid-less eyes were glazed white marbles in deep black pits. This was the face of a mummy, long dead, of a cadaver exhumed from an age-eroded tomb! Horror rocked the stalwart policeman back on his heels. He whimpered in his throat, fought nausea.
At that moment voices sounded behind him. He exploded to his feet, whirling as his free hand plunged to the holster for his gun! From the darkness of the alley, came the gruff rumble of a man's voice, the shrillness of a woman's.
The woman's: "No! No! Not again! Don't make me..."
