Margaret Ronald - Evie Scelan 01 by Spiral Hunt

Author:Spiral Hunt [Hunt, Spiral]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

I had been here before. There was the hospital bed, there the damn beeping monitor, and there the woman who was not Mrs. Crowe. Not my mother.

I retreated away from the bed, backing up against the white glow of the wall. The woman stirred, and I pressed back against the wall until it yielded and broke, dropping me into darkness—

The spear was heavy in my hand, but lighter than surrender would ever be. Men screamed and died around me, and I laughed to hear their cries.

I pointed skyward, shouting guttural words, calling my host to battle, to slaughter, to feed the crows upon carrion. And at my instigation men in harsh skins charged forward, their hair bristling with battle rage, rational thought lost in my frenzy. The blue marks on their skin were pale imitations of the spirals running up my arms, curling through my hair, clinging to each finger like the reins that I jerked again to send my gray horses wheeling, my chariot flying behind them.

The spear’s haft quivered as I drove its blade into the eye of an enemy. His blood spattered my face, and I laughed, laughed in harmony with the howls of the injured and the death cries of the slain.

I jerked awake, the last of a scream dying in my throat. Dim light filled the room, a few shades paler than moonlight, throwing ghost shadows into the corners. My breath sawed in and out of my throat, and for a long moment I couldn’t distinguish the sweat drying on my skin from the blood of the dream. The spirals had drunk that blood, I remembered, and glowed all the more fiercely, as they were glowing now—

I choked out a new scream, this one hoarse and disbelieving. There had been a glow. There hadn’t been.

My arms—

Books fell to the floor as I fumbled for the light. Its warm light was no comfort, even if it did banish the memory of the faint blue glow, the glow of thin lines like those that had covered Frank’s body. Like the ones in my dream.

I held out my arms: nothing. Except that the damn scratch had flared up again, and badly; thin lines of red now streaked up from it, twisting in a way that could almost resemble spirals.

Brendan’s note had fallen on my bed, faceup. I stared at it, then grabbed the phone and started dialing, shivering convulsively though the night was warm. I pulled the blankets up around me and rocked back and forth as the phone rang.

At last the other end of the line clicked. “Hello?” Brendan’s voice said fuzzily.

“Brendan? It’s—it’s Genevieve. I’m sorry, I know it’s lat—”

“Genevieve? Are you all right?”

“I…” It sounded so stupid now in the lamplight. “I had another nightmare. I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have woken you up, this is stupid of me—”

“No. Wait.” I heard a rustling, and a creak of bedsprings. “Are the…the things I left with you still up?”

“I think so.” I stared at the windows and concentrated, and the silver lines flickered into view.

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