Free Forbidden by Ted Dekker Page B

all she said was, “Now you’ve ruined the sheets.”

Chapter Nine
    R om’s eyes opened. For a moment he was aware only of the peeling plaster on the ceiling above. He could not place its location, could not remember falling asleep under it, had no idea where he was.
    He realized he was breathing hard, that his fingers and face were prickling as though they had just regained circulation. That his head was throbbing.
    He blinked, following a crack in the ceiling plaster with an unfocused gaze. Was he drugged?
    The events of the night crashed into memory like the falling shards of a broken window.
    He wasn’t drugged.
    He’d ingested the blood.
    Other details slammed into place. The old man. His father. Avra.
    He sat up—too quickly—and the room tipped around him. His heart crashed against the cage of his ribs, hard enough to make him wonder again if the blood had indeed been a poison. One even now about to burst his arteries.
    Something wasn’t right. He felt as if he dangled on a narrow precipice between life and death, buoyant and terrified at once. The space was darker than he remembered; only one of the seven candles still burned on the candelabra. Shadows crept from the room’s edges, sliding with the flicker of the candle along the coffin against the wall.
    Coffin. Basilica. For a moment he wondered if he was dying. If the oddities attacking his mind were the onset of Bliss or something horrific.
    He stood, managed to get one foot under himself, then lurched to one side and planted his face in the ground. Pain flashed out from his chin, the impact having jarred his brains.
    He pushed himself up to his knees and unsteadily looked around. This was the storeroom he’d escaped to, with its stacks of chairs and candelabras-in-waiting. He was not dead, but painfully alive.
    Still, he couldn’t pretend something wasn’t wrong with his head. Not merely off kilter, but terribly misaligned. He couldn’t seem to make complete sense of his surroundings.
    It had to be the darkness. The horrid shadows.
    Rom staggered to his feet, arms out for balance.
    The gloom struck his senses like hot tar. It crowded his nostrils and filled his lungs, forcing him to pull hard for breath. But when he did, he sucked in not air but terror—terror and darkness.
    For several seconds, Rom stood with his feet planted and his knees bent, trying to breathe. Dear Maker, help me. I’m dying, help me! But his dread only swelled.
    He jerked his head around, seeking escape. There, to his left, burned the sole source of light: a candle with a low, flickering flame.
    Fire. A feline eye winking on the head of a taper.
    He blinked, and the finger of flame crooked and beckoned. His fear immediately abated, tempered by a new sensation that stroked at the back of his mind.
    He lowered his arms and breathed more easily, captivated by the sight. Had he ever seen such a wondrous thing? How did that effusive glow work? How could something so small and so devoid of substance banish all that was evil?
    Around him the darkness breathed as though alive, and yet before him a single flame no more than half the length of his smallest finger called him to wonder.
    Tears filled his eyes. Warmth spread down his arms and back. It was beautiful! He stumbled forward and stopped in front of the candle, unable to tear his gaze away.
    “Maker,” he whispered, his tongue dry inside his mouth. Emotion choked him. “So beautiful.”
    From the corner of his eye he saw the shadows coiling behind the coffin. Was that possible? The blood worked its power like a drug.
    He returned his gaze to the flame. The world had changed before his eyes, and this tongue of light was a work of magic. Rom drew his finger through its lithe body and marveled at its heat against his skin. How had he ever taken such a thing for granted?
    He didn’t know how long he stayed like that. By the time he straightened, the candle was hardly more than a pool of wax. In another few minutes, it would