One Last Look by Miller Linda Lael

Author:Miller, Linda Lael [Miller, Linda Lael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Look Trilogy
ISBN: 9780743470513
Google: aUJr3dteorkC
Amazon: 0743470516
Publisher: Pocket
Published: 2006-11-28T05:00:00+00:00

Fourteen

I was aware that I was dreaming. I knew I was lying in my own bed, safe beside Sonterra. I even knew that it was after midnight, though my eyelids were too heavy to lift.

I sat in the back pew of Father Morales’s little church, surrounded by candlelight, flickering ineffectually against the shadows, by wafting incense and plaster saints. Francis of Assisi teetered on my right, cradling a blue bird with a chipped beak in the palm of one hand. The Virgin Mary, her delicate feet balanced upon a crescent moon, graced my left.

Up near the altar, a bride and groom stood with their backs to the odd congregation, the bride in full regalia, the groom standing straight in a rented tuxedo. Sonterra and me, I remember thinking, and nudged Mary to make sure she was paying attention.

“I now pronounce you man and wife,” a male voice announced.

I felt a swell of anxious anticipation.

With a whoosh of flapping wings, St. Francis’s blue bird took off, circled the sanctuary twice, then nose-dived into the middle of the wide aisle, shattering audibly into shards.

Meanwhile, organ music swelled to the rafters. I was sorry about the blue bird, but shit happens. My attention was riveted on the bride and groom, my breath raw in my throat.

I saw Sonterra’s profile as he turned to face me—that was me up there, swathed in silk and lace, wasn’t it? He was so handsome, so earnest, that I felt my heart quiver in my chest.

“You may kiss the bride,” said the priest who wasn’t there.

Sonterra tenderly lifted the veil, bent his head for the kiss, and recoiled. A skull grinned up at him from where my face should have been, brown like the ones in Danielle’s dining room, with chunks of what looked like mummified flesh stuck to its cheekbone.

I screamed and shot bolt upright.

“Clare.” Sonterra laid a hand on my arm. “Clare!”

I was still fighting my way out of the dream.

Sonterra switched on the bedside lamp, said my name again.

I blinked, and the bedroom came into dizzying focus. My whole body shook, slick with clammy sweat, and my breathing was so rapid and so shallow that I thought I was going to pass out from lack of oxygen.

“Easy,” Sonterra said gently. “You were dreaming, Babe.”

I was afraid to turn and look at him, in case he’d morphed into a skeleton, or I had.

He slipped an arm around me, pulled me against his warm, solid chest. “You’re soaked,” he said, brushing his lips against my temple.

I started to cry. I wanted to tell him about the nightmare, but I couldn’t seem to assemble the words. I felt cold and, at the same time, feverish.

Sonterra used the edge of the top sheet to dry my cheeks. “Easy,” he said again.

“I’m f-freezing,” I managed.

He held me more tightly. “Want to tell me about it?”

“It was awful!”

“I gathered that much.”

“Just hold me. I-I need a few minutes—”

He waited, and when I stopped shivering, he got up, fetched a hand towel from the bathroom across the hall.

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