Read Online The Pale Waters (#1 Reclaimed Souls) by Della Roth - Free Book Online Page A

yellow-gray sunlight trickle down.
Remembering my apprehension last night as I walked through a
deserted city, we now pass under the same arch, out of the inner
city, and I ask Roland why Skyscraper City is empty.
    “Black water plague,” he answers with
unease. He doesn’t sound confident in his answer, and my suspicions
are raised. “I evacuated the city weeks ago. But some are coming
back.”
    “Did the royals leave?” I ask, looking over
to a lower part of the mountain just outside of the city limits. A
dozen mansions peek through dark treetops.
    Roland follows my gaze.
    “No,” he says and leaves it at that.
    “Are you nervous for some reason?”
    “That the prototype won’t work?” he asks,
deliberately, in my mind, misunderstanding the question. He knows
full well what I meant.
    I grin at him, but he’s no longer looking at
me. Roland’s head is bent low, and he gives a perfect impression of
a downtrodden individual, oppressed, depressed, and easily
frightened. I doubt we’ll attract any notice—the city is empty,
after all—but at least he’s acting the part. He isn’t a young buck,
prancing and dancing in their sheer fabriskin robes, singing songs
of hopeless, tragic love.
    As if on cue, just as we round another
corner and pass a large, dilapidated warehouse, a fairly young man,
maybe twenty, begins to serenade us. I grin when Roland realizes
the singing man is singing to him .
    “ Dearest Goddess has sent me a love… she
hears my song of woe… with a heart as pure as a dove… oh,” he
now sings to our backsides as we move away, “he delivers me a
fatal blow.”
    “That wasn’t funny,” Roland growls. I can’t
see his face, but I suspect he’s red with embarrassment.
    “It was to me,” I say with light laughter.
After a several moments of silence, we reach the entrance.
    It’s a small, hidden alley. We walk through
a beaded curtain made of finger bones that click and clack lazily.
We pass through a crooked pathway that weaves between shanty
businesses and homes and other buildings whose purpose are best
left unknown and unquestioned.
    “What is this place?” Roland asks.
    “Like I said, it doesn’t have a name.”
    The mediocre and moldy smells of the inner
city fade away and in its place, a newer, spicier aroma permeates
the air. It mixes with smoked herbs, intense incense, fruity
cigarettes, women’s perfume, and the heavy scent of charcoal
chicken kabobs. Widow’s Lane was empty last night, but today, it is
bursting with life.
    “Everything smells so good,” Roland
exclaims. “I don’t know where my nose begins and my stomach
ends.”
    I laugh softly. “Be careful what you say
around here; folks will take you seriously, serve you, and then
expect you to pay. And, if I’m being honest, avoid the fruity
cigarettes and don’t follow the women’s perfume. It generally never
leads to an actual woman. At least not one you’d pick out of a
crowd. The results aren’t pretty. But, on the way out, we’ll get a
chicken kabob. I know a good place.”
    “Don’t worry. I’m already following the
woman I want.”
    “You keep talking all romantic like that and
I might swoon.”
    I stop in front of a nondescript, unlabeled
rusty building—though in certain spots, the original red paint pops
through. I pull aside a leaning door, step inside, but then I
quickly step back outside, place a hand on Roland’s chest and say,
“Stay here. I won’t be but a moment.”
    “I’m not staying out here alone.”
    I smirk. “Scared?”
    “Absolutely. What if another woman or,
Goddess forbid, fruity cigarettes lure me away?”
    “I’d say my opinion of you wouldn’t be
altered.”
    “That’s low.”
    “Come in if you want, but I must warn you,
if you value your life, don’t—”
    A woman’s wrinkled face appears behind the
half-opened, half-broken door.
    “Rahda, is that ye? Thought I heard ye
voice.”
    “Don’t do what?” Roland asks with an edge to
his voice.
    “Dorni,