Free The Adventures of Lazarus Gray by Barry Reese Page A

stole
something from me. Eight pages from a very old book. I want them
back. Do you know anything about them?"
    "Harry wasn’t much for
reading," Doris said, shaking he head. "I don’t know anything
about… Oh." A strange expression passed over the girl’s face and
Goodwill knew that she had just remembered something.
    "Tell me!" he demanded,
raising a hand as if to strike her.
    Doris flinched and began to
speak rapidly. "He said something about having seen somethin’ that
he shouldn’t have. Said that he was gonna do somethin’ about it!
That it was time to be a man. But he didn’t tell me any details! I
swear it!"
    "But you knew enough to
know it had to do with my papers."
    "Yeah. When he was telling
me about it, I saw some old papers on his table. He’d bought a big
envelope to put them in."
    Goodwill narrowed his eyes.
"Was he going to mail them to someone?"
    "I don’t know.
Honest!"
    Goodwill turned away,
seething internally. Had he misjudged Harry? Had the man not been
so stupid as to hold onto the papers himself? He glanced back at
Doris, catching her as she stared longingly at the door. She was
going to either make a break for it or begin screaming soon.
"Sazar," he said and Doris looked at him in confusion.
"Feed."
    The spectral form of a nude
woman became visible at his side. Even Doris, as heterosexual as
any girl could be, was forced to silently acknowledge the
loveliness of Sazar’s form. But then Doris let her eyes travel up
the long neck and settle on the horrific visage that was Sazar’s
face. A scream died in her throat and Doris drew back as Sazar
lunged for her.
    Goodwill watched for a
moment or two before looking out the window. The sounds of Sazar
lapping at the girl’s spilling blood were nauseating.
    Down below, he saw a black
sedan pull to a halt in front of the building and two men emerge.
One of them was very familiar to Goodwill, as he was to almost any
citizen of Sovereign: Lazarus Gray, whose grim features were
regularly depicted in newspaper photographs. As leader of
Assistance Unlimited, Gray was a constant thorn in the side of the
underworld.
    Goodwill waited until Gray
and Morgan had entered the building and then he yanked opened the
window. The fire escape lay below and he nimbly swung his legs down
onto it. The metal structure was slick from the morning rain but
Goodwill held his balance well. Looking back into Harry’s
apartment, he said, "Sazar, there’s two men coming up. When they
get here, please take care of them and then come back to the house.
Understood?"
    Sazar looked up at him and
grinned. Blood dripped from her chin in copious amounts and she
allowed one hand to paw at the dead girl’s breast. Feeding always
stirred her passions to dangerous levels. "I’ll devour their
hearts," she swore.
    Goodwill said nothing,
descending the fire escape in silence. The arrival of Gray might be
nothing more than coincidence but he didn’t really believe in
chance. If Gray was here… and Harry had planned to send the pages
to someone… then it all added together that he might have sent them
to Assistance Unlimited. Everybody knew the group was housed on
Robeson Avenue and Goodwill suddenly realized that if Gray were
here, then the place might be abandoned for the moment.
    Grinning, Goodwill moved to
his car and slid behind the wheel. Perhaps, he mused, things might
work out after all.
     
    ***
     
    "So tell me again how you
know it was Harry who sent us the papers?"
    Lazarus Gray took the steps
two at a time, forcing Morgan to hurry in his attempt to keep up.
Morgan was a slender and fairly athletic man but he was in his
forties and had enjoyed life to the fullest. His words were
punctuated by gasps between nearly every word.
    "I took the liberty of
calling Sovereign Office Supply. Envelopes of that size aren’t
particularly common. They remembered a man coming in a few days
ago, wanting to purchase a single envelope. Most of the time,
buyers purchase them in packs of 5-10.