Read Online Shadow Burns: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Preternatural Affairs Book 4) by S.M. Reine - Free Book Online Page A

was to comfort her or me.
    The flowers wilted around us. Petals shriveling, falling to the uneven floor like brown snow.
    Dense fog pressed against the outside of the recreation hall, blotting out our view of the canyon walls, the grassy lawn, the house, the press waiting by the dirt road.
    Suzy had been right. I never should have gone to that memorial.
    It was a trap, and I’d dragged Isobel right into it.
    “Let’s get out of here.” I hooked my arm around her shoulders and turned to the door.
    A man stood in our path, greasy hair caked to his scalp, scrubs covered in muddy handprints. His skin was the same color as the fog, but dotted with black pustules. His lips were swollen sausages.
    I’d been looking at this guy’s autopsy photos a lot over the last week.
    It was the orderly, Nichols.
    You know, the person that Suzy had shot in the head.
    “Hope.” His shoulders trembled as he extended his hands toward us. A line of black blood trickled between his eyebrows and down his nose to touch his chin. “No hope!”
    Isobel screamed. “No!”
    She shoved the man aside, and he actually stumbled as though she had been able to touch him. When he hit the floor, I heard a wet splat , like he’d landed on balloons filled with blood.
    Before I could catch her, Isobel flung the door open and shot out into Paradise Mile canyon.

CHAPTER SIX

    NICHOLS WASN’T FAST ENOUGH to keep me from chasing Isobel outside.
    Scary as it was to be assaulted by a dead man, I was a lot more scared of losing Isobel.
    The air outside the recreation hall clung to my sweaty skin, making my suit drag as though I’d just emerged from a lake. The fog only gave me a few feet of visibility. The world was made of indistinct gray shapes on a paler gray void.
    “Isobel!” My voice didn’t seem to travel very far. Her name fell flat.
    A feminine figure flashed through the gloom. Couldn’t tell if it was her or the woman with the bad teeth.
    Glancing back at the open door, I saw a man moving in the darkness behind me—a pale shape with a perfect circle in his forehead where Suzy had planted a bullet. Nichols was getting to his feet, every motion making wet popping noises. Bones rattled inside the sack of his body.
    I really should have brought my gun.
    Isobel’s distant cry brought my attention snapping back to her. I chased after her, feet crunching against grass, breath choppy in my ears.
    Forget the bodies that should have been on display, forget the dead orderly, forget the fog. I had to catch up with Isobel. Keep her safe in that oppressive gray nothingness.
    The same shock of entropy that had screwed up the rec hall had also hit the parked cars. The sports sedan was flipped onto its side. The ragged rubber of its tires looked like clothes hanging off a shambling zombie. Shattered glass sparkled on the lawn.
    Another car was upside down; two others had somehow been stacked on each other.
    Godzilla would have made less of a mess if he had rampaged through the parking zone.
    Even my car—my loyal piece of crap that was well past its expiration date—was gripped in the clutch of the same kind of vines that climbed the canyon walls.
    Isobel cried out again. Footsteps slurped behind me. Danger ahead, danger behind.
    I wrenched the antenna off of my car, wielding it like a switch. Not much of a weapon, but there wasn’t much of anything to fight, either. I couldn’t whip the fog, couldn’t beat away the creepy silence that had fallen over Paradise Mile.
    But I could slap the shit out of Nichols if he caught up with me.
    Running blind, trying to follow Isobel’s voice, I had no way to tell if I was actually getting anywhere. The fog destroyed all sense of direction. I’d lost the house and the rec hall. All I saw were trees.
    Then my knees slammed into wood. I tumbled over the sawhorses that had held the press back.
    My hands slapped against the dirt road on the other side.
    The news vans weren’t in disarray like all the cars were, but that