The Woman in Silk by R.J. Gadney

Author:R.J. Gadney [Gadney, R. J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2013-08-17T04:00:00+00:00

32

His arms had stiffened. The sweat in his eyes was sometimes hot, sometimes cold.

What happened in bed was one thing. The appearance of the specter at the top of the Gothic staircase was another. So was the violence of his reaction to it.

Similarly, the figure in the storm he’d attempted to annihilate. By definition, he reasoned, the thing would anyway have been impervious to gunshot wounds.

The first advice he gave himself was to discover what Francesca had injected into his bloodstream. True, he was taking his Velamorphine, but quite what else she’d injected he’d no idea.

Two things were for sure. At best, if best it was, the revenants, the wandering souls back from the dead, were bent on persecution. At worst, the sighting, the physicality of the dread and horror had shot unadulterated fear into his bloodstream as if it had been venom from Francesca’s syringe. To prescribe an antidote was as difficult as prescribing a catch-all antidote for the toxins of real life.

In Afghanistan the “real life” vacuum had been filled with the singular arousal of warfare only men and women on active service experience. Civilians prefer not to be reminded of it because military combat embodies violence at its most intense.

It’s animal versus animal, creatures slaughtering other living things. To understand it fully you have actually to do it and keep on doing it. Once it’s over all you find is simplicity itself: living proof you’ve survived. Soldiering, for Hal, meant getting the job done or the big N.

Then, always lurking in the ether, was the worst, the greatest threat of all: someone somewhere, one day, might whisper: “He’s a coward.” Fighting men may confess to many things. Cowardice most definitely isn’t one of them. Fear of it attaching to you ranks on a par with incest—not something to talk about over the family dinner.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.