Queen Of Blood Read Online Free

onto it. Dream set her mug down with a sigh. She looked longingly at
     Frat Boy a moment longer, but he was still too focused on his damnable game. Vowing to make him pay for that later, she swiveled
     around on her stool to tell Cowboy Hat off…
    But the smackdown went undelivered, the words dying on the tip of her tongue as a paralyzing numbness swept rapidly through
     her body.
    There was someone on the bar stool next to her, but it wasn’t Cowboy Hat.
    The apparition smiled hideously through rotting lips. “Hello, Dream.”
    A ghost. A fucking ghost. Or a hallucination. That was more likely, she supposed, but how could anyone tell the difference?
    It was Alicia Jackson, her one-time best friend in the world. Alicia had been dead for more than three and a half years. She
     didn’t look like an old-time movie ghost, though. She wasn’t flickering or floating in mid-air. She looked as solid and three-dimensional
     as the bar stool under Dream’s ass. She was a walking corpse, her flesh bloated and rotting. The back of her head was a pulped,
     sticky mess—the exit wound from the self-inflicted gunshot wound that had ended her life. She wore a slinky little black dress,
     which meant a lot of visible putrescent flesh. The tortures she’d endured prior to her suicide were much in evidence, including
     the uncountable razor-blade cuts the demonic Ms. Wickman had inflicted on her. Each wound weeped blood.
    Alicia’s gruesome smile widened, exposing rows of teeth that protruded alarmingly from her blackened, shrunken gums. Maggots
     trickled from one corner of her mouth. “It’s been a while, girl.” She laughed and more maggots tumbled from her mouth. “Oh,
     I know what you’re thinking—I’m not real. But you’re wrong. I’m not a ghost. Not exactly. And I’m sure as shit no hallucination.”
    Dream opened her mouth to say something, managed a single, incoherent syllable before falling silent again. Her mouth hung
     open in astonishment. She simply couldn’t speak. What could she say to this…thing? The idea of holding a conversation
     with it was absurd.
    Alicia chuckled. “You’re still not believing it.”
    Dream nodded, a very slight downward tilt of her head. She didn’t want anyone in the bar to see her interacting with this
     thing that looked like her old friend. She knew they’d only see a thirtysomething chick in slut gear conversing with an empty
     bar stool. An aging barfly with severe mental problems would be the likely perception.
    She picked up her beer mug and drank deeply from it again. She looked at the television mounted on the wall behind the bar. The Simpsons was on, and she pretended to pay attention to Homer’s shenanigans.
    Alicia scooted closer and slapped a cold, clammy hand down on Dream’s upper left thigh. Dream sucked in a deep breath. The
     hand on her leg felt rough and leathery. She glanced down, noted the contrast between Alicia’s rot-brown hand and her own
     pale, unblemished flesh, and began to feel light-headed.
    Alicia leaned closer still and Dream felt the dead woman’s bony knee press against her. “There, girl. Do I feel like a motherfucking hallucination?”
    Dream trembled. She gripped the handle of her beer mug tighter. Her eyes flicked toward the bar’s front door. She could go.
     Just slide off the stool and hit the ground running. Bang through the door and leg it across the street to the lot where her
     old Honda Accord was parked. Then drive. Get the hell out of this stink ing, gray, miserable New England town, find some other
     place to prowl for a while.
    Alicia’s dead hand gave her thigh a squeeze. “Don’t matter where you go, baby. I’ll be there. It’s like I said, I’m not exactly
     a ghost.”
    Dream looked at the bar and kept her voice as low as possible. “Then what are you?”
    “I’m something you created.”
    Dream frowned. “Bullshit.”
    “Oh, it’s true, all right.” Alicia laughed again, and Dream saw a single maggot