Cristy Rey [Incarnate 00.5] Edge of Seventeen (epub)

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.Still, Maggie answered, “Consider that this kind of being could walk amongst us.Consider that this person could transcend the mundane, physical shell of her body.Don’t you do that, Sunday? Don’t you experience this?”Sunday shrugged then.To be compared to a mythical being seemed silly.She would sooner believe in vampires and angels than in an Incarnate.“Whatever,” she’d answered to Maggie.“An Incarnate can’t be everything all at once.It’s just not possible.”Perhaps Maggie and the other nuns were witches in their own way.She assumed, perhaps wrongfully, that growing up among them, she was one of them.That she was merely someone with a gift, an innate ability that had grown into a practiced skill.Sunday had never assumed that she’d been anything but what they all were, just a little stronger.The air in her dungeon had once again grown stale.Bernadette came into this room alone, but she wasn’t alone.There were others outside.Sunday could feel them eager to enter her dungeon.They were hungry for her.Rabid, even.“You are going to experience pain, child,” Bernadette continued sternly.Sunday could imagine the woman’s furrowed eyebrows and narrowed eyes set on her looking down her nose.“Your body will be assaulted as will your spirit.You will be reshaped and molded, inside and out.You will be cleansed of your ill, and you will be born again, pure and supple.Here, our coven gathers to fashion your rebirth from human child into something wholly new.You are the Incarnate, dear child, and that wondrous gift comes at a cost.”Maggie had explained rape to her once.You know, because that’s what parents do.They warn their sons and daughters about the wrong kinds of touching and the shame that arises even if it wasn’t one’s fault.Sister Margaret did what she could after Sunday’s mom couldn’t any longer.This wasn’t exactly rape yet, but that’s what Sunday feared most: the ‘yet’ part.In her limited experience, Sunday could think of no other reason why she was in the position she was in if not for that horrible end.Pulsing just a hair beyond the walls of it were those desperate auras.They were excited that Sunday was here.Theirs were the bated breaths of wanting.Right now, Sunday wished she follow Sister Margaret instructions: poke him in the eyes, scream your head off, and run.So much for good advice when you’re naked and bound to a cement block.For a second, Sunday wished she’d followed that advice the second Angel had approached her.She’d known what was in store then, except perhaps not the details of what was to come.Sister Margaret had been less forthcoming in what she envisioned of Sunday’s destiny.The nuns who cared for her after her mother’s passing were kind and generous.But they had their secrets too.What little they told her clicked together in Sunday’s mind as Bernadette lay out what she planned for her.“You’ll be hunted, you know.You’ll be feared by some and envied by others,” Maggie had told her.It was the most candor with which Maggie had ever answered any of Sunday’s questions and, of course, it was one of the last things Maggie said to her.When Maggie told her that it would happen soon, her certainty flowed through Sunday.Sunday knew it would because Maggie believed it, and the nun was never wrong.Maggie grinned wanly as she wished she could be there to help, but that Fate deemed that she couldn’t.Sunday would brave the suffering alone.That’s just how it had to be.“When the time comes, you must remember all your training.You must remember all your lessons and all the strength you’ve developed over the years,” Maggie imparted.The training Sister Margaret referred to was pretty much all Sunday had ever known in her life.Since she was six years-old, Maggie and the sisters had set about the task of teaching Sunday to hone her talents, talents that had always hinted just below the surface, but became evident and strong with practice.“You train yourself to minimize the perceptions because it is the only way that you can retain your sanity, but you must learn, above all else, to keep out those others that would want to control you from within.You are as powerful as you allow yourself to be.Your sensitivity is both your strength and your weakness.”Those words were etched into Sunday’s brain, carved there by repetition.By whatever gifts the nuns had known, they had expected that something would happen to her one day, and they needed to prepare her for the unfortunate event.Life, however, proved to be the greatest practice session of all.Held captive by some nut-job sorceress, Sunday learned that Maggie was right about Fate’s designs for her.Worse, she learned that she was alone.Being alone meant that all of the stuff that welled up inside of her could overpower her, and she wouldn’t know how to control it.Being alone meant not having Maggie and, without Maggie or her sisters, then Sunday wasn’t sure that what she had was a gift rather than a curse.A really shitty, really horrible, and, evidently, ironically enviable curse.None of that was helping matters any in Bernadette’s lair.For all her training and all the knowing better, Sunday tore her concentration away from keeping up her walls to protect herself from Bernadette, and let her mind wander to the question of the Incarnate.As her shields waned, the witch’s power bulged.It pushed its metaphysical body to the edge of Sunday’s consciousness.Slowly, Sunday became aware of it, and she snapped back to the task at-hand.“The Incarnate’s a crock of shit,” Sunday spat.From behind the blindfold, she narrowed her eyes and shot a hard look into the darkness and in the direction of the witch Bernadette.It didn’t matter that she couldn’t see Sunday’s glower.Sunday shimmied her shields down just enough to ensure that anyone standing just outside the walls would feel it.Turning back to face the ceiling and pushing her shoulders back so that they rested flat against the cement bed on which she lay tied and shackled, Sunday clenched her molars tight and felt her jaw pulse.“Let’s get this goddamn show on the road,” she spat.Shaking her head quickly, she bit down on her lip and focused on reasserting her strong will.Nevertheless, the first words she spoke were the last that she would have for some time where she had any real control over herself.After that, she was nothing more than a pet project for the strongest witch in the Northwest, a witch who would later assert control over the entire country.CHAPTER SIXCyrus sat cross-legged at his post, eyes boring into the pages of a well-worn copy of Heart of Darkness.The hallway’s walls were dense with religious tapestries.Red-blood carpeting and gold accents spoke of rich opulence that contradicted Bernadette’s otherwise stark presentation.If the witch wore bangles and necklaces, they were nothing particularly handsome.The house, however, was straight out of a Russian oligarch’s dream.The wealth Bernadette had acquired through her organization was well catalogued in even the dankest corner of her estate.Rather than take off for Alaska on the morning after the Incarnate exchanged hands, Cyrus told Stephen that he’d be staying in Seattle for another day.When Stephen asked why, Cyrus merely said that it was a private matter.They locked eyes for a full minute while Stephen attempted to crack Cyrus’ ever resilient mask of emotions, but he found nothing.Nothing but purpose.However clear the determination was in Cyrus, the direction was not.When Cyrus approached Bernadette the next morning, he had nothing to ask and nothing to say.Not anything he could put into words, anyway.For whatever magical or mundane reason, Cyrus just couldn’t pull himself away from the girl he’d dropped into Bernadette’s hands [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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