Your Turn to Suffer by Tim Waggoner (free romance novels .TXT) 📗

even now watching her from their concealment, waiting for her to be foolish enough to think herself safe. They’d wait for her to open her door and get out of the car. Maybe she’d do so to check the damage that the Civic had sustained during her improvised escape. Or maybe she’d step out of the car to assure herself that this place was real, that she wasn’t merely imagining it. Whatever the reason, once she opened the door, they would attack, finally getting their opportunity to sink their claws into her flesh and tear her to pieces. But it didn’t feel like they were out there. It felt as if she were entirely alone in this desolate darkness.

Only one way to find out.

She lowered the driver’s-side window the merest crack. Cold air filtered into the car, along with a strange odor, almost metallic, like the smell of ozone that lingers after a lightning strike. No shadow creatures rushed toward her car, no curving ebon claws slid through the opening between the upper frame of the door and the slightly lowered window. Encouraged, she lowered the window down to the halfway point, and just as before, no attack came. It looked like she had left the creatures in the real world, and she wondered what had happened to them when the Civic had vanished. Had momentum carried them forward into the wall? She hoped so, and when they hit, she hoped it had hurt like hell.

She began to shiver in the cold air filtering into the Civic’s interior, so she raised the window all the way up and turned on the heater. The car’s engine had been running long enough to produce warm air immediately, but the change in temperature provided only partial comfort. Her wounds still throbbed, and she was getting blood all over the seat. She obviously possessed the same body as she had the other times she’d been in this reality, and she wondered what had happened in the Vermilion Tower when she’d appeared on the Nightway in her car. Had this version of her disappeared from the tower, leaving the Cabal to stare at an empty X-cross and wonder what had just happened? Or had the two versions of her merged? Whichever the case, she liked the idea of those red-robed fuckers standing around and scratching their asses as they tried to understand how she’d Houdini-ed herself away from them.

She didn’t know what to do now. Could she return home by closing her eyes once more and willing herself there? If she did, would she and her Civic appear in the same place relative to where they’d been when they’d left? Probably outside the cemetery wall, and likely in the street. If so, the shadow things would still be close by, and she had no doubt they’d scent her somehow and come after her again. They might even be able to find their own entrance to the Nightway and continue their pursuit of her. There was no way to know what the goddamned things were capable of.

Speaking of pursuit, would the Driver get in his big black car and start racing up and down the Nightway in search of her? Possibly. Probably.

Certainly.

Regardless of whether the shadow creatures, the Driver, or both came after her, it wouldn’t be wise to stay here. Best to get moving, even if she didn’t have a destination in mind. After she’d gone several miles, she could try to transition back to the real world again. With luck, she’d reappear far enough from the cemetery to throw off the shadow creatures, at least for a while. She took her bare foot off the brake and pressed it to the accelerator. She started slow at first. There were no painted lines to mark the road’s edges, and it was difficult to tell where the Nightway ended and whatever lay beyond it – obsidian-colored soil or pitch-black rock – began. As she drove, she wondered if she’d slipped all the way into full-blown madness, and if so, she wondered if she cared.

Humming to herself and not thinking about Aashrita, why she’d visited her friend’s grave, or what she’d hoped to accomplish there, she pushed the accelerator down farther and the Civic began to pick up speed.

* * *

The Shadowkin mill about the cemetery, searching for Lori, sniffing for her trail like dogs that have lost the scent of their prey. They do not possess the capacity for rational thought, not in the way humans understand it, and are thus incapable of reasoning out where Lori has gone. All they know is that she was here and they almost had her, and now she is not here.

Each time the Shadowkin are near Lori, they feed on her energy, growing stronger, more real. But even with their increased abilities, they cannot now sense her presence. Without her, they have no focus, no purpose. They are lost, and this frightens and angers them. Without Lori to hold them together, the Shadowkin begin to drift apart, leaving the cemetery one by one, moving out into the town in search of other food, and just as importantly, something to vent their anger upon.

Something to hurt.

Something to kill.

* * *

It was an old joke that mail carriers get invited into the residences of horny customers on their routes to deliver quite a bit more than bills and sales flyers. Wife doesn’t answer her phone when you call during your lunch hour? Your baby doesn’t look like you? Blame the mailman.

Norman Palmer was well aware of this cliché when he took a job with the postal service as a carrier, and other, more seasoned employees teased him about all the ass he’d get on the job. Not just the male carriers. The women joked about it, too. Norman had figured they were all just razzing the new guy, and he didn’t expect more out of his job than doing a lot of walking while his mind wandered. Norman dreamed of being