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.The thing that stopped her was an upward glance as she neared the table.Her gaze locked on the light fixture and the blazing electric bulb on the other side of an opaque square.She stared at the light a long time, her fuzzy mind laboriously trying to discern what was wrong with this sight.And when it came to her, the fog swirling in her mind dispersed at once.She frowned and gave her head a hard shake.“What…the…fuck?”How could the power be on in here? Everywhere else in the city, things that ran on electricity were as dead as the dinosaurs.But, somehow, in this one room in this horrorshow apartment, current still coursed through hidden wires.It made no sense.In order for current to flow, a power grid would still have to be functioning somewhere.And she’d seen enough in the world outside this place to be pretty sure that wasn’t the case.So what she was seeing just wasn’t possible.Unless…well, unless something other than the machinery of man had restored the power to this grim corner of the world.Some…force that wanted her to see something.For the first time since entering the room, she wanted something other than vengeance.She wanted to flee.But she could not.She had come all this way.Turning back now would render all she had endured a waste.So her gaze went to Aaron.Her quarry.Her prey.And he did look like a cornered animal, a wounded, whimpering beast with his leg caught in the steel teeth of a trap.Though she wasn’t aware of it, the corners of her lips rose upward and she made a low sound of pleasure.When she reached the table, she swept the fax machine and copier to the floor, where they landed amid a sound of shattering plastic.Then, with a sound halfway between a grunt and a rising roar, she gripped the edge of the table with one hand and flipped it over.Aaron’s legs flailed weakly as he pushed himself up against the wall, seeking shelter that was no longer available.Smiling broadly, Emily gripped the bat with both hands again and raised it over her head.“Look at me, Aaron.”But the broken man’s hands did not come away from his face.He wailed and shook his head.Emily snarled and drove the tip of a heel hard into his stomach, causing him to wail again and raise his knees to his chest.Emily screamed and kicked repeatedly at his legs, driving them back and exposing his stomach again.This was followed by a series of brutal kicks to his abdomen.Still, maddeningly, the condemned man’s hands remained over his face.Emily screamed again.“I WANT YOU LOOKING AT ME WHEN I KILL YOU, MOTHERFUCKER! I WANT YOU TO SEE MY GODDAMNED FACE WHEN YOU DIE!”Despite enduring what must have been overwhelming agony, he refused to acquiesce to her wishes.And Emily’s patience, what tiny shred of it still existed that is, evaporated.She kicked hard at his hands, mashing and snapping the bones in his fingers with the heel of her boot.So that at last his hands came away from his face.The bat fell out of Emily’s hand.Her mouth opened wide and she forgot to breathe for a long moment while her reeling mind attempted to process this fresh horror.A whimper died in her throat and a constricted rush of breath came rolling out of her open mouth instead.“No,” she managed to say at last.What she was seeing was not only horrible but inexplicable.She didn’t speak out of pity for Aaron.She still had none.That one word was born of her mind’s inability to accept this hideous and bizarre reality.It came again.“No.”His eyes were gone.Something hot, some burning tool, had been applied to the empty sockets.Where once there had been eyes there now were only twin patches of cauterized flesh.The head twitched and rolled upward, instinct causing him to search for something he couldn’t see.How strange his face looked without eyes.Without empty sockets.Like a mask, a bland, featureless thing one might buy at a drugstore for Halloween.Emily’s face twisted into a grimace and her stomach did a slow roll.She was grateful she hadn’t eaten yet today.As it was, her gag reflex caused her throat to spasm dryly.She heard a sound behind her, the creak of a floorboard, and jumped, a scream bursting from her lungs.Sure she was about to face the person or thing responsible for Aaron’s horrific condition, she scooped up the bat and whirled to face the intruder.And tears sprang to her eyes when she saw that it was only Jake.“Oh, Jake…”The blanched pallor of his cheekbones told her the trip through the hallway had been no less harrowing for him.Her eyes beseeched him with a silent desperation that penetrated any lingering hurt he may have been feeling from her earlier treatment of him.He moved farther into the room and peered past her at Aaron.An expression of disgust creased his features.“Oh my God.What happened to him?”Emily tried to say something, but the words emerged as an unintelligible croak.She cleared her throat and drew in a calming breath.“I don’t know.I…I was about to…” Tears filled her eyes again and she wiped them away with growing impatience.“I was about to kill him.He had his hands over his eyes.I wanted him to see me.So I kicked him.And…and…”Jake came to her then.He laid a hand on one softly shaking shoulder.“It’s okay.” He sighed.“Have you had a chance to ask him about Abby?”Emily shook her head and sniffled.“No…I…I just…”He made a shushing sound.“All right.Okay.” He pulled her close and kissed the top of her head.The simple affectionate gesture was enough to dispel the last traces of the dark urges that had infected her.She felt suddenly human again.She recalled the arousal (there was just no other word for it) she’d felt moments ago and a sudden sob rolled out of her.Followed by another.And another.Jake pulled her into his arms and she buried her face in his chest.He stroked her hair and made more shushing noises while she cried it out.After several moments of this, she forced herself to snap out of it.This was neither the time nor the place for a breakdown.She broke the embrace and tilted her head up to look Jake in the eye.Her voice was small and frightened.“There’s something wrong here.”“No kidding.”She shook her head.“No, I mean really wrong.Really, really fucking wrong.There’s something…not natural at work here.Some kind of dark magic.I feel like Alice after stepping through the looking glass.Or whatever the Satanic equivalent of such a thing would be.”Jake frowned.“Come on.Be serious.You don’t think…what, the devil, or Satan, whatever…is responsible for this.”Emily shook her head again.“No.Not exactly.But something just as bad, Jake.” Her voice teetered for a moment on the brink of breaking again.She swallowed hard, and pressed on.“Something from that other world, maybe.Something worse than those demon things.You came through that hallway.I know you felt that wrongness.” Her gaze flicked upward a moment before settling again on Jake’s skeptical expression.“And look at that light.We have to get out of here.”Jake sighed.“Yeah.But let’s have a word with Mr.Child-snatcher first [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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