The Slayer Chronicles: First Kill Read Online Free

exchanged glances that indicated that he was merely a hysterical little boy who’d witnessed the brutal murder of his sister. Of course he saw monsters. What other way could his young mind possibly deal with seeing what he actually had?
    Now his parents were standing across the room, near Cecile’s coffin, as distant from him physically as they had been emotionally since Cecile had died. It had started the moment the police had left that night. All of a sudden, Joss had become the invisible boy at home, the way he was at school. He hadn’t just lost his sister that night. He’d lost his family, too.
    His parents had said nothing to him on the drive to the funeral home, and once they’d entered the building, it was as if they had had only one child, and that child was Cecile.
    Joss squeezed the photograph in his hand, careful not to wrinkle it. He’d taken it from the refrigerator door this morning, knowing that he wanted to look at Cecile, but also knowing that he couldn’t possibly stare at her corpse and convince himself that that was his sister. The object lying in that coffin wasn’t Cecile. It was merely bones and tissue, held together by preservatives. His sister was now experiencing the Next Great Adventure. He hoped death was that, anyway, that something lay beyond this life. Otherwise, his sister was a part of nothingness now. The thought brought tears to his eyes.
    “There is no shame in shedding tears for Cecile, Joss.”
    Joss looked up. He hadn’t noticed his Uncle Abraham enter the room, or sit down beside him, but there he was, dressed in a black, three-piece suit, his expression appropriately solemn. Abraham reached into his inside jacket pocket and withdrew a cloth handkerchief, holding it out to his nephew. Joss shook his head and willed his tears away, careful to keep his attention focused on Abraham and away from Cecile’s coffin. With a nod, Abraham tucked the handkerchief away again. “I’ve been told you were there when it happened.”
    Joss nodded. He didn’t know his uncle very well, had only encountered him on occasional holidays, at parties held by other distant relatives. He didn’t know much about him, really. Only that his uncle was a professor of some sort, and a world traveler. “I was. But no one believes what I saw.”
    Abraham raised an eyebrow. “And what is it that you saw exactly?”
    Joss swallowed hard, clutching Cecile’s picture to his chest, the threat of tears overwhelming him. But he wouldn’t cry. He wouldn’t allow himself that moment of weakness. Not until his sister had been avenged. “I don’t remember its face. But I do remember the blood. Cecile’s blood.”
    “An injury?”
    “Something like that. I can’t remember. My brain is too foggy.”
    “Where was your sister bleeding from and how much blood was there?” Joss’s heart grew heavy. He looked at his uncle and begged him with a glance to cease this line of questioning immediately. Abraham gave his shoulder a squeeze, his eyes full of pity. “A morbid question, nephew, but I must know.”
    The memory of that night filled his mind. Cecile in her bed, that liquid line of blood running down her neck to her pink ballerina sheets. Joss’s hands gripped the chair he was sitting in without him even being aware of it. “Her neck. She was bleeding from her neck. There wasn’t a lot of blood, not as much as you’d think.”
    Joss had once read that an average human child had 2.3 liters of blood pumping around inside of them, so he was amazed by what little blood had actually been spilled in his sister’s murder. He never would have confessed those thoughts to his parents, though. They might have locked him up in a nuthouse if he admitted to thinking such things.
    Abraham leaned a bit closer and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. “Take a deep breath, Joss, clear your thoughts and don’t force the memory. The harder you think about it, the more like sand the memory will become, slipping between