Free The Wrath of Angels by John Connolly

Angeline, as if he had not spoken. ‘Pathetic soulless creature, stealing the souls of others for company. Run, but it will do you no good. He’ll find you. He’ll find you and destroy you, you and all the others like you.
Fear him
.’
    The door to the room opened, and the nurse named Evelyn appeared, carrying a tray on which she had placed two cups, and a plate of cookies. She stopped short at the sight of Brightwell.
    ‘Who are you?’ she asked.
    ‘Get help,’ said Harlan, rising from his chair. ‘Now!’
    Evelyn dropped the tray and ran. Seconds later, an alarm began to sound. Brightwell turned to face Harlan.
    ‘This isn’t over,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe what you told me about that money. I’ll be back, and maybe I’ll steal what’s left of your wife and carry her in me, once I’ve finished with you.’
    With that he swept by Harlan, Angeline’s bell-like laughter following him. Although the home had instantly been locked down no trace of him was found in the building, or the grounds, or in the town.
    ‘The police came,’ said Marielle, ‘but my father said that he didn’t know what the man wanted. He’d simply entered my mother’s room and found this Brightwell leaning over her. When the police tried to question my mother, she was already gone, and she never spoke again. The end came quickly for her after that. My father told Paul about what had happened, and they kept waiting for Brightwell to return. Then Paul died and it was just my father who was left to face him. But Brightwell never came back.’
    ‘Why are you telling me this?’
    ‘Because the last word that my mother whispered to my father after that man fled was your name – “When it comes down, tell the detective. Tell Charlie Parker.” – and that, in turn, was the last thing that he whispered to me after he told us the story of the plane in the woods. He wanted you to hear this story, Mr Parker. That’s why we came. And now you know.’
    Around us music played, and people talked, and ate, and drank, but we were no part of it. We were cocooned in our corner, surrounded by the silk-wrapped forms of the dead.
    ‘You knew who this man Brightwell was, didn’t you?’ said Ernie. ‘I saw it on your face the first time we described him to you.’
    ‘Yes, I’ve met him.’
    ‘Will he be coming back, Mr Parker?’ asked Marielle.
    ‘No,’ I said.
    ‘You seem very certain of that.’
    ‘I am, because I killed him.’
    ‘Good,’ said Marielle. ‘And the woman? What about the woman?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘With luck, maybe somebody killed her too.’

7
    S outh, south: down Interstates and winding roads, past cities and towns, hamlets and scattered houses, across rivers and open fields, to a car on a lonely, dark stretch, to a woman leaving home, a woman who, if she could have heard the tale being told in a quiet bar in the Port City, might well have said, ‘I know of these things . . .’
    Barbara Kelly had just left home when she saw the red SUV. A woman perhaps a decade younger than herself was hunched over the right front tire, struggling with a lug wrench. When the headlights found her she looked frightened, as well she might. This was a dark, relatively unfrequented stretch of road, used mainly by residents making their way to and from the houses at the top of the narrow laneways that fed into Buck Run Road like tributaries. On a night like this, with clouds gathering and a brisk breeze making it feel colder than it was, there would be even fewer cars on the road than usual. Sunday evenings tended to be quiet around there at the best of times, as the residents resigned themselves to the end of the weekend and the imminent resumption of the weekly commute.
    The lanes all had names inspired by the natural world – Raccoon Lane, Doe Leap Lane, Bullfrog Lane – a decision made by the developers without any apparent reference to the reality of their surroundings. Barbara had never seen a doe here,