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

Then maybe it was something else you did. Something more recent, perhaps.

The idea stunned Lori. She’d assumed the action she had to confess and atone for had to have been the worst thing she’d ever done. But what if that wasn’t the case? What if what she’d done to Aashrita had nothing whatsoever to do with the Imbalance? Something small…. Like if you were walking on a mountain trail and accidentally kicked a stone that went over a cliff and started an avalanche. So what small thing had she done recently that could’ve caused the current situation?

In her mind, she saw a pair of eyes. Sad, haunted eyes, with threads of darkness that passed through the whites like storm clouds moving across a morning sky.

Can I ask you a question?

No, not like storm clouds. Like shadows.

Like Shadowkin.

She’d been suffering from a migraine at the time, had barely been able to think. The man’s question hadn’t fully registered on her consciousness, and she’d said no automatically and continued on to the pharmacy and the relief that awaited her within. If the man had approached her another day, she would’ve stopped, listened to what he had to say, and if she could, she would’ve helped him.

But would she have? Would she really?

Probably not.

The answer shamed her, but it was the truth. She’d do exactly what she’d done: written the man off as a beggar or someone who, if not completely crazy, was not right in the head and wanted to talk to her about whatever nonsense was rattling around in his skull. She’d ignore him and keep on keeping on. And just as she’d done, she’d forget all about him because he was in the past, and Lori Palumbo liked the past to stay where it was – dead and buried, where it could do no one, especially her, any harm.

So by not listening to the man’s question and answering it if she could, she’d kicked a stone over a cliff edge, and now, a week later, Oakmont was in danger of being crushed by a damn big avalanche – maybe the biggest that there’d ever been. But how could she make things right, and was it already too late? The Shadowkin were rampaging through the town, and the Intercessor was on its way. How could she hope to find the man – the Questioner – in time to stop what was happening? Hell, he could’ve been killed or unmade by the Shadowkin already, and if so, there was no way she could confess to him, let alone atone.

She wrapped her arms around herself in a futile attempt to generate some warmth, and once again focused her attention on Aashrita’s headstone.

“Looks like that last vision you showed me is going to come true after all. I wonder how long it takes to destroy an entire town. I suppose it all depends on just how big and powerful the Intercessor is.”

“It’s very big and very powerful.”

She turned to see the Driver coming toward her. His red robe had been torn to shreds, and it was something of a miracle that the scraps of cloth still managed to cling to his body. His flesh was cut, bruised, even burned in some places, and his left arm hung limply at his side, as if broken. One of the skin patches that covered his eyes had been torn, and a dark smoke-like substance curled forth and rose into the air. Even seeing him hurt like this, her first reflex was to reach into the jacket for the Gravedigger Special – a more than appropriate weapon to be used in a cemetery – but she found the inner pocket empty. Then she remembered: Reeny had taken the gun at the Dhawans’ and fired the last two rounds. Even if Lori still had the Gravedigger Special, it wouldn’t matter. What good was a magic gun without any bullets?

“Where’s Goat-Eyes?” she asked.

The Driver looked at her for an instant, as if he was unsure who she was referring to. But then he understood. “She’s still on the other side of the entrance to the Nightway, doing her best to hold off the Intercessor.”

Entrance? Right, the one near the cemetery wall that she’d used to escape the Shadowkin during her first visit to Aashrita’s grave. She assumed that was how the Driver had gotten here.

“I didn’t know you guys were that powerful,” she said.

The air was cut by a scream and then an object came hurtling toward them. It struck Aashrita’s headstone so hard that the impact broke the marker in two. The object bounced off, hit the trunk of a nearby tree, ricocheted, hit the ground, and rolled for a half dozen feet before finally coming to a rest less than three yards from where Lori stood. Steam rose from the object as if it had been exposed to superheated air. It was a head. More precisely, Goat-Eyes’. Roughly half of the head was a gleaming white skull, but the other half was more or less intact. The woman’s remaining goat eye was wide open, and for some strange reason it looked less disturbing in death than it had in life.

“We’re not,” the Driver said, his voice tired, defeated.

Another sound echoed through the cemetery then, unlike anything Lori had ever heard before. It was like the high-pitched whine of a jet engine crossed with the racheting-pounding of the world’s largest jackhammer. Lori clapped her hands to her ears to muffle the sound, but it didn’t help. The sound seemed to be coming from inside her head as much as outside. The noise even bothered the Driver. He gritted his teeth in pain and pointed to the far side of the cemetery, where the entrance to the Nightway was located. She didn’t see anything right away, but then she became aware of a crimson glow. The light grew larger, brighter, and she saw the air shimmer all around it. There was a shape within