SPECTER/Chapter 1 (excerpt)
She was in the basement again. It was pitch black, the only illumination a glowing, quarter moon etched into the floor. A burst of light split the darkness, and she moaned low in her throat.
Please, I don’t want to see anymore…I don’t want to look.
Yet her feet moved of their own volition, inching toward the mark…and the twisted bundle now lying in its center. A man was curled upon the stone. He wasn’t breathing, and his limbs were tiny and withered. But she knew he wasn’t dead.
He wasn’t human.
The daemon opened his eyes. I’ve been sleeping. But for how long? He could feel his arms and legs, but the sensations were muted as if they’d traveled from a great distance.
Then he remembered. He’d been imprisoned -- snatched from his body by the magic that had trapped him here. Even now sleep, like a delicious drug, threatened to overtake him. But he fought it away.
How many centuries would pass while he slept?
A doorway appeared in his mind and just beyond it, a tattered clump of flesh and
bone…
Copyright 2007 Valjeanne Jeffers-Thompson all rights reserved
Please, I don’t want to see anymore…I don’t want to look.
Yet her feet moved of their own volition, inching toward the mark…and the twisted bundle now lying in its center. A man was curled upon the stone. He wasn’t breathing, and his limbs were tiny and withered. But she knew he wasn’t dead.
He wasn’t human.
The daemon opened his eyes. I’ve been sleeping. But for how long? He could feel his arms and legs, but the sensations were muted as if they’d traveled from a great distance.
Then he remembered. He’d been imprisoned -- snatched from his body by the magic that had trapped him here. Even now sleep, like a delicious drug, threatened to overtake him. But he fought it away.
How many centuries would pass while he slept?
A doorway appeared in his mind and just beyond it, a tattered clump of flesh and
bone…
Copyright 2007 Valjeanne Jeffers-Thompson all rights reserved
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