Destroying Angel Read Online Free

extraordinary.
    I had never imagined a deerhound dancing with joy. But that was exactly what Thane was doing.
    ‘Mrs McQuinn!’
    The lantern was anchored and the man came over the wall.

CHAPTER THREE
    He was no stranger.
    We had met once before under terrifying and sinister circumstances during my first months in Edinburgh. This was Chief Wolf Rider, a Sioux Indian from the Wild West Circus, now transformed into a semblance of an English gamekeeper by a garb that suggested an Aztec high priest in fancy dress costume.
    Smiling, he helped me over the wall, looked down at Thane, and nodded solemnly. ‘So the deerhound has stayed with you, protecting you from danger.’
    I ignored that enigmatic introduction. ‘His name is Thane.’
    Three years ago no one believed he existed. Thane was then very good at keeping himself to himself and only deigning to appear to me.
    A deerhound! On Arthur’s Seat! A figment of my imagination, they said, all except Sergeant Jack Macmerry.
    Now everything was happening at once. The bird of prey swooped down, I threw up my hand to protect my head and yelled out, but the peregrine falcon settled happily on Wolf Rider’s gloved fist and shook out his feathers.
    ‘Kokopele is quite tame. He helped me find you. Pleasant change to tracking down his prey,’ he said.
    That touched another memory. Kokopele was the mythical flute-bearer of the Navajo Indians.
    I shuddered as Rider went on: ‘It is your deerhound you have to thank for keeping the white cattle at bay,’ and, looking over his shoulder, ‘but we would be wise to get out of this field immediately.’
    ‘Where are we?’
    ‘On Staines’ estate, but this part is the cattle’s territory and they are notoriously suspicious of strangers – and quite unpredictable. Follow me.’
    We made our way rapidly across the field to where my bicycle reclined gracefully against a fence. The sight of Chief Wolf Rider, without his Dakota Ghost Dancers from the Wild West Circus at Queen’s Park, was completely out of context in these surroundings and awakened bitter memories of my return to Edinburgh.
    Rider had come to Solomon’s Tower to identify the body of one of his troupe. Riding on the hill, Wild Elk’s horse had thrown him. Badly injured, he had crawled to the nearest habitation – my barn – and had died there.
    Wolf Rider was a shaman and came to carry out certain Sioux rites before the young man could be buried. He told me that Wild Elk believed he was being stalked on the hill by a large dog, and he presumed that this animal had spooked his horse.
    I looked at Wolf, walking ahead with Thane at his side. Meeting him again aroused painful memories that I shuddered to recall. I remembered his extraordinary and uncanny explanation that Wild Elk had killed an innocent white man who wore a Christian cross and, in accordance with Sioux beliefs, the dead man’s spirit had entered an animal to seek revenge.
    Danny wore a crucifix and Thane, a mysterious deerhoundwho lived on the hill, had chosen to befriend me. A coincidence, I told myself, refusing to be reconciled to such a terrifying idea, especially as I was clinging to the certainty that Danny still lived and that one day we would be blissfully reunited.
    Now as I watched the man and the deerhound, there was none of Thane’s usual shyness and caution with strangers. It was as if I was witnessing the reunion of old comrades, both possessors of that extra-sensory perception, well beyond my range, or indeed beyond the range of most humans.
    I guessed I was observing a phenomenon. Rider and Thane inhabited a world bordering on the supernatural. A world of instinctive intuition of which I had only touched the fringes. It was as though their bond had been forged many lifetimes ago, many ages past.
    Suddenly I was back in the present, surrounded by the menace of dark moorland, the feeling of danger in the air, despite the softening effect of the moonlight. Shivering, aware of being cold and