Read Online Black_Tide by Patrick Freivald - Free Book Online

anywhere but at him.
    He leaned forward, drawing her eyes back to his. "What does that mean?"
    She didn't flinch, didn't lean away, just chomped on her gum. "A minute ago I tell you—well, I sort of tell you—that some whacked-up cult is possessing little girls with demons, and you don't so much as blink an eye. Your augmentations came back, just yours out of everyone in the world, and she was the source. What do you think it means?"
    Her pupils dilated just a hair, and her facial temperature increased under her makeup. He didn't have anything close to Sakura's talent for identifying lies, but under her tutelage he'd learned how to make use of his augmented eyes for more than just night vision. Maybe not an outright lie, but not the full truth.
    "You think she's still alive."
    "I think she might still be alive, or whatever passes for alive for a Nephilim. Not the same thing. But if she is, she's got her talons so deep in you . . . ." She leaned back and booped his nose with a green fingernail. When he didn't respond, she stopped chewing and leveled him with her best all-business look. "I don't want to have to put you down."
     
    *   *   *
     
    Janet ignored the leers and glares on the way to her office, slipped inside, closed the door, and locked it. The server towers crowding her desk put off too much heat, and to compensate, the air conditioner cranked full blast. With the lights off, multicolored chaos from four screen savers blanketed the room in ethereal clown makeup.
    She grabbed a roll of paper towels from the cupboard behind her desk, and set them on the floor. She opened a black plastic trash bag and set it on the floor, then kneeled in front of it.
    A deep breath steadied her, then another, and another, slowing her pulse to as low as she could get it. Then she extracted a small knife from her pocket and a sprig of rosemary from her cleavage, pulled open the blade, and drew it across her index finger. The sharp blade caused almost no pain. Blood welled. She squeezed until the surface tension broke and the huge drop dribbled down her finger and across her palm.
    Rosemary crushed between her palms mingled with the blood, and an acid tang assaulted her nose. The cross tattoo that spanned her back erupted in pinpricks of freezing cold fire.
    "It hurts," Dawkins said. Her brother's voice came from everywhere and nowhere, clawing through her thoughts with no right to be there. Her soul shrieked at the invasion, but she snuffed it to silence through force of will. "I want . . . need . . . Oh, God. Why am I here?"
    "I know, D. I'm working on it. I found you as fast as I could."
    "It's been so long. How long? Can I stay?"
    She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. It came away bloody. "Gerstner's fighting her way back. I think she's winning."
    His despair wracked through her, an unholy, eternal madness that human thought couldn't contain. Terror snuffed his desperate thirst. "I can't stop her."
    She dropped to her knees and leaned forward. Hot blood leaked from her nose and eyes, dribbling down into an expanding pool, black under the flickering server LEDs, yet neatly contained by the plastic bag. "Don't stop her. Ride her coattails, brother. Come back to me on her wings."
    "I can't. I just need . . . something . . . something to take the edge off."
    She hid her disgust at his hopeless timidity, so in contrast to his living spirit. "You will come back. Here. With me. I'll show you what I've learned."
    Glyphs swirled through the pool of blood, curving parodies of ancient Hebrew. The ancient tongue mingled with modern thought which she stabbed like a dagger into his being. He clutched at it, and grasped for more.
    She pried his icy claws from her mind and let him go, sobbing through blood as he fell.
    Five minutes later she opened a tampon, smeared it through the blood, and bagged it along with the stained tissues she'd used to clean her face. She dropped the bag in the bathroom receptacle on her way out of the