One More Bite Read Online Free Page A

it’s not a hundred percent effective. Something about the venom can sometimes sneak past the cure. Obviously we believe she’s a Medusa, so we’re hoping to kill her before she makes her move.”

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    As Albert imagined the horror I’d just described, a woman who wound her pets around her hair like a turban only to set them loose on her unsuspecting victims when the killing mood struck her, he produced that sucking-on-teeth noise that made my ribs ache. It meant he was about to say something important. I waited for him to tell me he was impressed that the CIA trusted such a tricky assignment to his own daughter.

    “You should’ve brought a warlock,” he said before turning back to his map.

    I leaned over to Cole. “I should’ve killed him on the plane.”

    Chapter Four

    Albert surprised me by navigating us straight from the A9 to a winding country road to the long tarmac lane that led to Tearlach. As we drove toward the house, I realized it may have been our first trip together where he didn’t decide on a last-minute detour to some obsolete hole like the Museum of Big Gray Rocks or the Littlest Loch in the Nairn Valley.

    “Would you take a look at this place?” Albert said as he folded the map.

    “Reminds me of thter„e Hansel and Gretel story,” Cole replied.

    Much like the woman herself, Floraidh’s place exuded warmth and hospitality. From a distance we could glimpse orderly gardens just beginning to blossom in the promising warmth of mid-May. They surrounded a four-story confection whose designer must’ve had a wife who adored jewelry. So why not throw a bunch of doodads on the house as well? Six gables that I could see made the roof a reshingler’s nightmare. The front porch, which ran around three-quarters of the house, had been enclosed to begin with, along with the two sunporches that jutted above the main entrances, which were at its east and west ends.

    “What the hell kind of monstrosity is that?” wondered Albert as he eyed the four smoking chimneys and the gingerbread molding edging the roofline.

    “I believe that is called a Queen Anne Victorian,” said Vayl.

    “No wonder they have to take in guests,” he replied. “It must cost a fortune to heat. And it probably never gets warm inside. Not even in the summer.”

    Yeah, go ahead, Pops. Enjoy the show. Even the trees marching down the edge of this smooth, straight lane want you to believe the sham. But wait’ll you hear Floraidh’s secret.

    She and her coven worshipped Scidair, a sorceress whose legends told how she’d become Satan’s concubine in the afterlife. When you kept that in mind, you could see the reality behind the advertising: a looming old construction laced with manipulative magic, guarded by green, bushy lumps with hidden thorns poised to reach out and grab the unsuspecting guest. Backing up my observations were tall thin rocks that jutted from the earth at random points in the yard, as if Mother Nature herself was giving us the middle finger. She’d shaded most of them gray, but at just the right angle they glittered so brightly that if you looked at them wrong you saw dots for the next two minutes.

    Jack jumped down to get a better look out the window. Something on my side of the lane had caught his attention. He began to scratch at the glass.

    I ran my hand down his back. “I don’t see anything, dude. What—”

    Movement. I caught a blur out of the corner of my eye just as Albert yelled, “Watch out!” and threw up his hands.

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    I leaped forward, putting myself between my dad and whatever had startled him, practically sitting on his lap as Vayl jerked the wheel to the left. The van spun sideways, giving me half a breath to realize that a man had stepped into the vehicle’s path. He didn’t even look up as