Blood of My Blood: More Excerpts

Here are some more excerpts from Blood of My Blood, designed to keep you cold in this last full week of June…

Hughes did not relish the moment when the dead man’s pants were pulled down. Hughes had seen and experienced a hell of a lot as a New York homicide detective and had become inured to most of it over the years, but genital trauma still skeeved him out.

“Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?” That’s what it was. Macbeth, right?

“Macbeth had the bit about ‘who would have thought the old man,” et cetera, right?” he asked a crime-scene photographer crouched down near the body.

The photog’s expression clearly revealed that she thought Hughes had been to one too many crime scenes. “How the hell am I supposed to know?” she asked.

“Well-rounded education?” Hughes suggested.

When her left foot came down, that electricity sizzled again, and she nearly screamed in pain, but she needed her breath for running. She hissed into the agony and forced herself to run, hobbling as quickly as she could, not caring which direction she went, not paying attention to where she was, just propelling herself forward as fast as she could go, each step a mad, hurtful rush.

It waits inside you, Billy had said in the visitation room at Wammaket. It pads around like a big cat, and when you least expect it, it comes up behind you. Oh, he could feel it now. Exactly as Billy had described it. It was a cougar, a tiger, a lion, prowling his innards, softly growling deep in its — and his — throat. It had the taste of blood on its lips and tongue.

It wanted that taste for him. And God help him, he wanted it, too.

He was not a man of whims, Billy Dent. He was a man of passions. A man of convictions. He knew what he believed, and he knew what he deserved. When there were things to be done to the cute little blond up the street, Billy Dent damn well went and did them.

Because no one else would, and Billy couldn’t live in that world.