The Bleed: Book 2: RAPTURE by David Moody (best selling autobiographies .txt) 📕

something and I can’t run. Annnd here we go.” Her heart began to race as she saw a figure across the field begin to make its way toward her. It was moving at a normal pace and so far had not made any threatening noises or gestures. Curiosity won out as she figured she could always just go back into the stairwell and close the door behind her. As he got closer, yeah, she thought, definitely a he, her heart began to race—but in a different way. He was somehow familiar, but it couldn’t be, right?

“Dean?” She couldn’t help but rub her eyes, even as she berated herself for being so naive. “You’re…so young.”

He was smiling at her.

“And alive.” Her emotions warred between whether she should be panicked or thrilled. She’d loved her husband, in the beginning, and seeing him like this was nearly too much. “This isn’t possible.”

“Anything is possible here.”

“You died in a nuclear fireball.”

“Yes, I suppose a version of me did.”

“You look like you did when we were in college.”

“And you can too.”

“What? How is that possible?”

“As I said, anything is possible here. We can be together and happy like we were when we first met. You just need to step completely out of the hotel and surrender yourself to me.”

Sandra smirked. She knew you didn’t need to be as brilliant as she to see the trap that was unfolding before her. “Surrender myself?”

“It is merely a word.”

“Yeah. Lots things have gone wrong in history after ‘merely a word.’”

“Sandra, your dreams, desires…they can all be yours if you join with me.” His hand was outstretched and there was longing on his face, one she remembered fondly when he was looking to skip classes to spend the day in bed with her. But there was also something more. Hidden underneath the facade, a desperation; she wasn’t sure if this wraith of the man she knew as her husband was being forced into this, or if the being mimicking him could taste how close it was to succeeding. “Do you not want to be young again? To have that feeling that the entire world is at your feet?”

“You’re trying too hard, Dean. Sometimes less is more.”

“We need a way in.”

“We, is it? It looks like you’re alone.”

“We are never alone.” His voice now sounded like three blended ones; it struck a discordant tone within her.

“I’m going to go now.” She was closing the door.

Dean, or whatever it was, began to sprint toward her. “Unwise decision, Sandra.” He returned to his normal speech pattern, but the blackness in his eyes could not hide his true intentions. Sandra slammed the steel door shut then screamed as a fist punched through the heavy door and grabbed her arm.

Sam awoke from a nap; she couldn’t say “refreshed,” but she felt better for it. She noticed a yawning Thistle looking over the control panel. “Did you sleep?”

“Some. Your snoring kept me awake.”

“What’s happening outside?” Sam stood and went to the monitors. “Where is everyone?”

“Dead or hiding, I guess. I had to stop watching.”

A wriggling worm feeling stirred in Sam’s stomach. “Where’s my mother?”

“I thought it was pretty quiet. She must have left while we were sleeping.”

“Did she go outside?”

Thistle nearly replied with I hope so; instead, she shrugged.

“This can’t be good.”

“What could she do?”

“It’s my mother; what couldn’t she do?”

Thistle wasn’t overly concerned. The demon hadn’t awakened anything within Sandra, so she didn’t have any magic to speak of, and even with the god-weapon, there was only so much she could do with it, considering it was empty.

“I need to find her.”

“Sam, we have more important things to do, like help those people if we can, and maybe try and discover what’s happened to Maddie.”

“Maddie’s dead,” Sam said with resignation in her voice.

“We don’t know that, not for certain, and we sure could use her. I have a basic understanding of the controls, but nothing like she does.”

“It’s all lost. What’s the point? My father and Maddie are dead, my brother and boyfriend are missing, and my mother will be plotting something to destroy the rest.”

“My father is dead and my mother and brother are missing, as well, but we can’t let ourselves stop trying; that might be all we have left. We have powers, and we owe it to those people out there to do our best to help them is we can.”

Sam thought otherwise. It seemed to her like no matter what they did, those people were doomed. Then again, doing something, anything, was better than sitting around feeling sorry for herself.

The rings began to glow; it started as a light brown and quickly moved to bright red. “You doing that?” she asked.

“Haven’t touched anything, yet.” Thistle had pulled her arms in, her palms facing the console.

“The monitor!” Sam pointed excitedly. They were both looking at Maddie, who, for some reason, was staring intently at the floor. “She’s alive!”

“Where’s the giant red demon?” Thistle asked.

Sam wondered if the glowing color of the rings had anything to do with Kalandar. “Is this just a picture?” Maddie didn’t appear to be moving.

Thistle studied the image intently. “No, she’s moving…just really slow.”

“Weird.” Out of the corner of her eye, Sam noticed that the brightness of the rings was beginning to fade. “Thistle, I think we need to get her out of there.” An edge of panic beginning to well within her.

“I…I don’t know what to do.”

“The opposite of what we did to send them away!”

“Do you know what we did?” Thistle asked.

“I mean, sort of.” The rings were turning pink and the image on the monitor was getting blurry. “I feel like if we don’t get her now, she’ll be trapped there forever, wherever there is.”

“Right, right, retracing our steps…how hard can it be?” They shared a glance knowing full well just how difficult it was. Thistle tentatively reached out and worked the controls, the ring still losing luster.

Sam was concentrating. She had her head back, her eyes closed, her arms