Free Descent07 - Paradise Damned by S M Reine Page A

stripping away the skin, baring the muscle underneath.
    The gray air burned.
    Blood splattered.
    Elise allowed herself to scream, channeling the pain and fear and rage through her throat. But when she inhaled, everything tasted of blood and sap again, choking her.
    You deserve this , said her father’s voice.
    Cold fingers pawed at Elise’s face.
    Her fingernails dislodged. She could only watch as blood spurted from her hands, pouring over the bodies, splashing her father’s eyes, filling the darkness with a wash of crimson.
    Time inverted, flipped, restored Elise’s skin.
    When her eyes cleared, she realized that she was lying on the grass beside the sapling again. She wasn’t sure when she had lost control of her body and fallen. The arm flopped in front of her face wasn’t skinned, though—it was whole, uninjured, intact. She had imagined that part.
    Adam stood in front of her, with the door beyond him. The sight of its four panels and gold handle made her feel far sicker than any visions of her father. The trees swayed around it, stirred by a gentle breeze that Elise couldn’t feel.
    “Well?” He prompted.
    Elise tried to respond, but when she tried to draw in a breath, an obstruction in her throat stopped her. She gagged. Pushing herself onto her elbows, she vomited.
    A black, shiny mass surged from her throat and splattered on the ground. When it erupted, effluence and ichor spilled over the grass.
    A serpent wriggled out of the bile and slithered into the long grass.
    She coughed, sitting back on her heels.
    “Well?” He asked again, sweeping a hand toward the door.
    Elise gave him a pinched smile. Her eyes were blurred from throwing up. “There is nothing left to take from me,” she said. “You can’t fucking hurt me. You can’t do anything.”
    “We’ll see,” He said.
    The Tree disappeared, and Elise unfolded again, and again, and again.

IV
    NEVADA – MAY 2010
    The sun dawned red over the desert, painting the mountains bloody violet, like raw meat. Anthony Morales had been jogging since the Milky Way was splashed across the sky. Now it was five-thirty in the morning, and it was already sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit; his bare chest was slicked with sweat.
    He looped around a copse of Joshua trees, circling back toward the trailer. Dust clouds trailed his shuffling feet.
    The McIntyre family’s trailer stood on the horizon—a white box guarded by a pickup truck—and the first hints of sunlight made the roof glow orange. By the time he reached the edge of the property, delineated from federal land by a row of rocks that Dana McIntyre had placed earlier that spring, the sun was high enough that it reflected off of the windows like fire.
    Dana was already playing outside again. She drew a circle around herself in the dirt, using a stick broken off of the sagebrush. Her flannel pajama shorts were dusty. Her fine blond hair was still in the braids that her mother always gave her right before bed.
    “Whatcha doin’?” she asked, drawing radiating lines off of the circle.
    Anthony slowed to a stop at her side. “Running. What are you doing?”
    “Making a circle of power,” Dana said. “I’m going to cast a spell.”
    He planted his hands on his hips and tried to slow his breathing. He was too hot now that he had stopped moving. “Have you decided that you’re a witch today? I thought you were a kopis yesterday.”
    Dana looked offended with all of her seven-year-old gravity. “I can be both.”
    “Sorry,” Anthony said. “I forgot.”
    The screen door squealed open.
    “Your phone’s ringing, Anthony,” shouted Leticia McIntyre, apparently unworried about waking the year-old baby sleeping on her shoulder.
    He held out his hands. She tossed the phone over the side of the stairs, and he caught it.
    “Thanks,” Anthony said.
    She went back inside, and he tilted the screen so that it was shaded enough to read.
    Unknown number.

    He refused the call and pocketed it.
    Lucas would be up