CHARIOT: Book III of the Millennium Quartet by Charles L. Grant

Author:Charles L. Grant [Grant, Charles L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror, Dark Fantasy
Publisher: Crossroad Press & Macabre Ink Ditigal
Published: 2015-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Part 3

Are You Ready For A Miracle?

Chapter 1

1

The moment Trey woke up, he knew the day was going to be a bad one. A disaster. The kind of disaster that strongly suggested he not bother to get up, just stay in bed and wait until tomorrow, when things had to get better, they sure couldn’t get any worse.

It didn’t take much effort to run down the reasons.

Sometime during the night, the air conditioner had evidently decided to take a few hours off. The unit hadn’t clicked on when the temperature rose above the thermostat setting, and the house bordered on being uncomfortably warm.

Sometime during the night he had gotten up, undressed, and by the evidence of the bottles lined up on the floor beside the bed, he had finished all the beer in the fridge. He vaguely remembered heading for the bathroom a few times; he didn’t remember taking off his clothes at all.

Sometime during the night, someone had exchanged his brain for a pile driver that pounded now in his head, a solid regular pounding that matched the rhythm of his heart. He groaned and rolled onto his side, pulling the thin blanket up over his shoulder, over his head, while he tried to find a way to burrow through the pillow so the agony of sunlight leaking around the blinds wouldn’t take his eyes out.

Sometime during the night, the wind had come up, a hard steady blow that had moaned around the house, promising no one would be able to go outside without getting a mouthful of grit, eyes stinging with sand.

Sometime during the night, nightmares had tried to edge their way into his dreams, succeeding just long enough that he didn’t get much real sleep and could still feel the breath-holding approach of terrors that were never quite made whole.

He felt like hell, and he felt like a jerk.

The last time he had lost such a battle with his drinking was the day he learned of his sister’s murder, and he had realized that he was, at last, without family. Alone. Too old, maybe, to be called an orphan, but he had suspected the awful empty feeling was pretty damn close.

This time . . .

He threw off the blanket and struggled up to sit on the edge of the mattress, shoulders hunched, head down. Moaning, groaning, gingerly massaging his temples in case the gods were listening and needed to know how much agony he was in so they could toss a little pity his way.

Or a new head.

But why should they?

Feeling like hell was one thing; feeling like a jerk was rubbing salt into the wound.

He deserved it, though; no question but that he deserved it.

His mother, when questioned about how and when to bluff, had explained that bluffing, no matter how you looked at it, was a simple matter of lying. The better liar you were, the better bluffer you were. All gamblers were liars to one degree or another, and if they had any innate talent at all, they eventually become damn good liars indeed.

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