Sorceress of Faith. Robin D. Owens

Чтение книги онлайн.

      Contents

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      Chapter 15

      Chapter 16

      Chapter 17

      Chapter 18

      Chapter 19

      Chapter 20

      Chapter 21

      Chapter 22

      Chapter 23

      Chapter 24

      Chapter 25

      Chapter 26

      Chapter 27

      Chapter 28

      Chapter 29

      Chapter 30

      Chapter 31

      Chapter 32

      Chapter 33

      Chapter 34

      Chapter 35

      Chapter 36

      Chapter 37

      1

      Boulder, Colorado

      Late spring, early morning

      She was running, running, running. Marian wished the passages were narrower, twistier, because the thing that chased her was huge and deadly. With each breath putrid air seared her lungs. The cavern’s corridors oozed slime.

      She stumbled, clutched the plastic ball holding her hamster close. Looking down at her cross-trainer shoes in horror, she saw the laces were untied. She always tied them in perfect double bows.

      A vibration hit her back. The monster’s breath. Stitch cramping her side, she used terror for a burst of speed and reached narrow upward stairs. Fresher air, laden with blood instead of poisonous acid, fouled her nostrils. She climbed, thinking the thing behind her could flow up the stairs. It wanted her blood, her guts, her brains.

      Bumping from side to side, scraping skin raw, protecting her pet, she jumped up the steps and burst out onto a wide ledge of rock. With agility she didn’t know she had, she pivoted, avoiding the edge, hit the cliff face. Leaned into it. Gulping night air, she felt the thing brush past her, and fall screaming.

      She couldn’t stop herself from looking down. Saw something worse than the huge shattered body of the monster that had hunted her. Her younger brother Andrew was surrounded by chanting black-robed druids who looked like death personified. Some of the druids held scythes, some gongs, some chimes.

      Prone Andrew was, more pale than he’d ever been in life. Shrieking, “Nooooo!” she put the ball between her feet, lifted her arms as if she could call thunder that would set his heart to thumping again, push his blood; lightning that would nail his soul into his body, fire the spark of life.

      A wet chuckle came next to her, freezing her blood. Slowly she turned her head to see a cowled figure with gleaming red eyes, a face not quite human but which might have been a man’s, once. He opened his mouth wide, and it got larger and larger, ready to swallow her whole. She raised her hands, fingertips arcing blue fire—

      Marian Harasta jolted from the dream, covered in clammy sweat. Morning light streamed through the high windows of her garden apartment and she gasped in relief.

      Before she could exhale, the chimes sounded, rippling through her nerves and echoing in her mind. Then the gong reverberated, arching her body off the bed. Her vision blurred and distant chanting rushed in her ears. She was bowed for one long moment before she fell back onto the bed, panting.

      First the nightmare. Now the sounds. For the past months, dreams and auditory hallucinations had peppered her life—sleeping and waking. She steadied herself with even breathing. She would figure out what was happening to her. She’d had a full physical the week before, and a psychological evaluation, too. And she was perfectly fine.

      The strangeness had started with sounds, then the dreams, then an itchy feeling as if she were a butterfly escaping from a constrictive cocoon, ready to stretch her wings. The notion was more than a little scary because her academic career was on track and her life СКАЧАТЬ