Sandman Slim with Bonus Content Read Online Free Page A

in half by a giant crab-thing that bled fire and screamed in the anguished voices of all the souls it had devoured. My ribs and skull were beaten to Silly Putty.
    But I didn’t die.
    I don’t know if it was the spells, the drugs, the Aqua Regia, or just clean living, but I was changing. Every time I should have died but didn’t, I got stronger. That meant that the next attack had to be harder, faster, even more ferocious than the one before. After a while, I actually looked forward to the beat-downs. Each one changed me and that change meant that I was immune from a similar attack next time. By the end, I was a flesh-and-bone, armor-plated Dirty Harry.
    By the time the ruling-class, old-school Hellions and nouveau celebutante fiends decided it was time to get rid of me, it was too late. I was too strong and by then I was doing more interesting things than killing in the arena. I was freelance-killing Hellions out of the arena, and that meant I was protected from on high by forces far darker than your run-of-the-mill tail-and-pitchfork type.
    On the other hand, I’d never been shot before.
    “Stark?” says Kasabian from a million miles away. “Is that really you?” He laughs quietly, nervously. “Mason is going to shit himself.”
    My left hand shoots to the side, grabbing the .45’s still-warm barrel and driving it into the floor. Kasabian’s fat finger is still looped in the trigger guard, so he comes down with the gun. Meanwhile, my right hand flickers to my boot and tears free the black bone knife. I twist my body toward Kasabian and bring down the knife in a smooth arc. Kasabian’s head tumbles to the floor and rolls away like a pumpkin. His body flops to the floor.
    From beneath the Disney new-releases rack, Kasabian’s head begins to wail.
    “Oh God! Oh Jesus, fuck! I’m dead!” It’s quality wailing. Downtown, I became kind of a connoisseur of wailing and this is prime stuff.
    “I’m dead! I’m dead!”
    Crawling shakily to my feet, I pick up Kasabian’s shrieking melon by the hair, tuck the .45 in the back of my jeans, and grab his leg by the ankle with my free hand. In a situation like this, when you want to clear away the evidence, you want to drag the body. You might think it’s faster to toss it over your shoulder in a fireman’s carry, but lifting a limp body is like wrestling with two hundred pounds of Jell-O. It wiggles, shifts, and refuses to stay still. Dragging is slower, but much less aggravating.
    I carry Kasabian upstairs, his head still screaming blue murder and his heavy torso bumping along behind us.
    The second floor is one big room. It’s large, with a nice big window on one wall, but sparsely furnished. There’s a bed, a couple of desk chairs, and a table piled high with tape decks, DVD burners, and a big color printer—a mini video-bootlegging factory. I drop the body by the door and set his head on the worktable. The gun I toss on the bed. Kasabian is still shrieking like a banshee, which is pretty good for a guy with no lungs.
    I grab a chair and drop down in front of him. Digging the cigarettes out of Brad Pitt’s now-bloody jacket, I light one up and blow smoke in Kasabian’s face.
    “Smell that? That means you’re not dead.”
    He stops screaming and looks at me. Then he spots his body on the floor and starts caterwauling again. I take a slow drag and blow an extra-long cancer cloud right in his face.
    He gets quiet and finally seems to focus on me.
    “Stark? You’re dead.”
    “Tell me, Kas, how does it feel to wake up in the worst place you can imagine? Of course, you’re luckier than me because you know why you’re there.”
    “Fuck you! You think you’re sneaky? You used magic. The whole Sub Rosa will know you’re here. Mason will know you’re here. He’ll kill you.”
    I make a game-show-buzzer noise.
    “Guess again, fat man. This knife doesn’t disturb the aether and doesn’t leave any magical traces. Pure stealth tech, which is sort of its