The Supernaturalist Read Online Free Page B

generator.
    Alive, though. Definitely. In some considerable pain, but alive. Pain was proof of that. Cosmo’s vision was filled with multicoloured wires, sparks, ancient transformers and rust chips that fluttered around his head like bloody snowflakes.
    His arm jiggled. Ziplock was moving.
    ‘No,’ he whispered, no air for shouting. ‘Don’t move.’
    Ziplock moved again. Maybe he heard, maybe he didn’t. Cosmo would never know. His partner’s movement dragged the metal cuff across two exposed wires, diverting ten thousand volts from the supply wires and into the two boys.
    The charge catapulted the boys from the generator, spinning them across the roof puddles like stones acrossa pond. They came to rest against a guard rail. On their backs. Looking up.
    Redwood peered down from above. Both boys’ patterns had disappeared from his tracker. The generator could have shorted out the electronegative halogen microbeads in their pores. But most likely they were dead.
    It was obvious what could have happened. The fugitives had been knocked from the roof by the rainstorm. It was a simple lie and believable, so long as he did not stick around here to get photographed by some snoop satellite. The marshal hurried to the stairwell. Better to let someone else find the bodies. He would be in the restaurant helping the injured when it happened.
    Cosmo did not have the energy to speak. His entire body felt bleached by the electric shock. All he could hear was his own heartbeat, slowing with every breath. Missing beats. Shutting down.
    His eyes played tricks on him. Hallucinations, he supposed. Strange inhuman creatures appeared on the walls of the surrounding buildings, crawling at amazing speeds with no regard for gravity. They hurtled over the lip of the building, veering sharply downwards towards the crash site. Two split from the group, swerving towards the injured boys. One settled on Cosmo’s chest. Weightless. Watching him with large expressionless eyes.The creature was the size of an infant, with smooth, blue, translucent skin, four slender limbs and an oval head. Its features were delicate and impassive. Hairless and smooth. Sparks rolled in its veins instead of blood.
    The second creature flickered in the corner of his eye, settling beside Ziplock, cradling his smoking head. Cosmo felt his heart skip another beat. Maybe two. What were these creatures? Fear sent a shiver through his chest, like another blast from the generator.
    His spine arched in shock and panic, bucking the creature on his chest, but it held on effortlessly. It reached out a blue hand.
Four fingers
, thought Cosmo,
only four
. The hand settled on his heart and sucked. Somehow the hand was pulling the pain from his body. The agony dipped, faded and was gone. The more the creature sucked the brighter its light became, until its blue glow morphed to sunset gold. Cosmo used the last of his energy to look down. Something was flowing from him in a starry stream. He knew what it was. Life. Cosmo felt his days and months slip from his body like water through a fractured dam. The creature was killing him. The panic rose in him again. He wanted to struggle, he tried to grab the creature but his muscles had turned to jelly.
    Then things happened very quickly. Three kids appeared on the rooftop. Two boys and a girl. They weren’t medics of any kind, that much was clear from their clothing and their age, but at least they were human.
    ‘Two here,’ said the first, a tall, older boy, clothed from head to foot in black. ‘I’ll take them. You check below.’
    His comrades scurried to the roof’s edge, peering down to the street.
    ‘They’re looking, but they’re not landing,’ said the second newcomer. A Latin girl, maybe fifteen, with a gang tattoo over one eyebrow. ‘Too much water. The fire brigade are hosing the truck.’
    The first youth drew what looked like a torch from his shoulder holster, twisting a ring on its base. White sparks flickered at the