Free A Whisper of Southern Lights by Tim Lebbon

against a tree. Gabriel could not see the spirit’s face, but it seemed to be examining the corpse. Then it reached out.
    “I’m here,” Gabriel said.
    The ghost continued to ignore him. Its hand passed into the chest of the dead man, sinking to the wrist, and then it moved its arm, head still tilted to one side.
    It looked as though it was listening. And writing.
    Finished, the ghost moved back across the clearing. It paused here and there to stare nowhere, its face still twisted by the madness borne by its soul at the point of its murder.
    “I’m sorry, Sykes,” Gabriel said. He had no idea whether or not the dead man heard. The ghost vanished back between the trees, forever lost.

    It took Gabriel until sundown to remove the bamboo stakes. He was beyond exhaustion, beyond thirst and agony, and as the last stake slid out, he felt something like hope bleeding from his body.
    The only thing that had prevented him from lying there, pinned to the ground and waiting to see what time would bring, was the thought of Sykes’s ghost wandering into the clearing and touching the corpse.
    He sat up, fighting a wave of nausea that threatened to knock him out for the night. He bit his lip and pinched the webbing between thumb and forefinger, the pain surprisingly sharp beneath the agony of the bamboo piercings.
    Eventually, he managed to stand. He made his way across the clearing, sidestepping the ragged corpse of a dead soldier. Roots conspired to trip him, and fatigue almost brought him down. But the sudden vivid memory of that whisper in Italy—breeze, dust and leaves—drove him on.
    He reached the body hanging on the tree and tugged at its boots until it fell.
    Behind it, scored into the tree’s thin bark by the fingers of a dead man, was the secret from Mad Meloy’s grave. A secret that Temple now knew as well.
    One word: “Armageddon.”
    And a date.

About the Author
    TIM LEBBON is a
New York Times
bestselling writer from South Wales. He’s had more than thirty novels published to date, as well as hundreds of novellas and short stories. His latest novel is the thriller
The Hunt,
and other recent releases include
The Silence
and
Alien: Out of the Shadows.
He has won four British Fantasy Awards, a Bram Stoker Award, and a Scribe Award, and has been a finalist for World Fantasy, International Horror Guild and Shirley Jackson Awards. Future books include
The Rage War
(an Alien/Predator trilogy), and the Relics trilogy from Titan.
    The movie of his story
Pay the Ghost,
starring Nicolas Cage, is out now, and other projects in development include
Playtime
(an original script with Stephen Volk),
My Haunted House
with Gravy Media,
The Hunt, Exorcising Angels
(based on a novella with Simon Clark), and a TV series proposal of
The Silence.
    Find out more about Tim at his website: www.timlebbon.net.

Also by Tim Lebbon
    (selected bibliography)
    THE A SSASSIN S ERIES
    “Dead Man’s Hand”
    Pieces of Hate

    The Hunt
    The Silence
    Shadow Men
(with Christopher Golden)
    The Heretic Land
    Coldbrook
    Echo City
    THE SECRET JOURNEYS OF JACK L ONDON
    The Wild
(with Christopher Golden)
    The Sea Wolves
(with Christopher Golden)
    White Fangs
(with Christopher Golden)
    TOXIC C ITY
    London Eye
    Reaper’s Legacy
    Contagion

    Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi—Into the Void
    Alien—Out of the Shadows
    Predator: Incursion
    Alien: Invasion
    30 Days of Night: Dear of the Dark
    Hellboy
: The Fire Wolves

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Copyright Page
    This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organization, and events portrayed in this novella are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
    A WHISPER OF SOUTHERN