(eng) Paul Kidd - Effectuators 04 by Sweet Albion

Author:Sweet Albion [Albion, Sweet]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

5

The headache was long, fierce and pounding: it wore away what small good humour Brilliana might have found. And humour was perhaps required – for when she viewed herself through transmogrified goggles, she now glowed a very faint sparkly blue. She had taken on a positive charge, which at least matched her with the dog.

Fang remained beside her every minute of the night and day, guarding her, warming her, and bathing her face at regular intervals. He investigated every sound, keeping a careful vigil and ensuring his mistress kept warm.

Brilliana lay weak and sick. The room had been kept well shuttered and curtained, since the merest hint of light was agony. The street was oddly quiet today: if she had not known better, she might have thought that the entire road about the Stickleback had been blocked to horses. With her head swathed deep in bandages, a great many blankets about her and her dog upon the bed, she could only lie and feel the day swimming in and out around her.

Her head wounds itched.

Groping in the darkened room, she managed to find the pot of ectoplasm on the floor beside the bed. She felt gingerly beneath her bandages, then applied an entire handful. It most decidedly seemed to help. She slathered on more, moving in a daze – then sank exhausted into bed. The dog licked her fingers clean.

Her head was afire, her wits astray, and the acetylsalicylic acid was doing very little to assuage the pain.

Fang’s capacitor pack lay beside the bed – a pack that ran cables around and around a first edition, signed copy ofAlicein Wonderland. Brilliana groped about and found the cable ends, thrusting them into the ectoplasm jar. She triggered the charge and let the thing seethe and boil.

Ashes: she had been taking the dose steadily, every time she came awake. A pinch of angel ashes on her tongue, then ectoplasm to wash it down. The dust fizzed and made the flesh feel strange – it tasted like a horrid blend of quinine and rotting leaves – decidedly unpleasant. She felt a weird, tingling sizzle spreading through her throat and stomach – then out into her limbs. Suddenly it struck her as it had the day before – an electric shock, jerking right through her. Brilliana arched, gritting her teeth, the dog looking on in alarm. When the terrible fit had passed, she lay back once more, panting, eyes almost blinded by dancing lights. She had an inkling that had there been the slightest hint of negative charge within her, she would have burst apart like an exploding bomb.

She hoped she hadn’t overdone it. Still – if alittle was of help, then surely a surfeit would be a hundred times as good?

Perhaps Annie should not be told…

Exhausted by her efforts, Brilliana slept a while. She was vaguely aware of the rain outside – of the creak of carts being quietly manhandled down the street. There were dreams – sometimes terrible, for Brilliana had seen things no other mortal had ever beheld.

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