Free The Hot Zone (A Rainshadow Novel Book 3) by Jayne Castle Page B

woodshed, she could not see anything. But she heard the footsteps crossing the front porch. The door squeaked again when it was opened.
    Someone had gone inside the cottage.
    For a moment or two, nothing happened. She held her breath and clutched the rock.
    And then the door slammed open. Footsteps sounded again, moving quickly back across the porch and down the front steps. Soft, muffled thuds. Athletic shoes, Sedona decided.
    She tightened her grip on the rock and the flicker. The way her luck was running lately, the intruder would probably come looking for her, and the woodshed was the obvious place to start.
    But the footsteps kept going, down the graveled driveway to the road. When Sedona risked a peek around the edge of the shed she could see the beam of a flashlight dancing wildly in the fog but it was impossible to make out the running figure. A moment later the bouncing light vanished, too.

Chapter 7
    She sat there with her back against the shed wall, trying to calm her abused senses. She hadn’t been this rattled since the Disaster. But at least she wasn’t sliding into unconsciousness this time. She was pretty sure the psychic side of her nature hadn’t been shattered.
    Pretty sure. She just needed time to get her act together, she thought.
    The auroras started then, the brilliant green lights flooding the night sky, infusing the thick fog with an eerie green glow. It didn’t make it any easier to see things in the mist, but at least the world was no longer so oppressively dark.
    Maybe she was hallucinating again. No, she had seen the auroras last night and the night before that. Everyone else in Shadow Bay had seen them, too. The locals said they were a common atmospheric event around Halloween. The waves of light were real.
    A familiar rumble came out of the fog.
    “Lyle,” she said. “About time you showed up. Hope you had fun tonight. I had a blast.”
    Lyle appeared out of the glowing green mist. She wouldn’t have been able to see him at all if it were not for the fact that he had all four eyes open. He hopped up onto her knees and made urgent little noises.
    “It’s okay,” she said. She reached out to pat his head. “But I need a minute here.”
    Lyle rumbled again, jumped down off her knees, and disappeared into the green mist.
    “Just when you think you’ve found the right guy,” Sedona said, “he ups and disappears on you.”
    Damn. Now she was talking to herself. This was not good. Maybe she had hallucinated Lyle. It was a deeply disturbing thought. Maybe the drugs they had given her in Blankenship’s lab had done more damage than she had realized. Maybe there had been no psi-trap in the bedroom tonight. Maybe she wasn’t seeing aurora light reflected in the fog. Maybe she was permanently lost in a dreamscape.
    More footsteps echoed in the mist. She listened closely. Boots, this time, and moving fast. She wondered if she was now having auditory hallucinations. Dreams were strange.
    She listened hard, wondering if the boots would go into the house. But they didn’t. They came directly toward the woodshed.
    Lyle materialized out of the bright fog. All four eyes still open. But this time he chortled reassuringly and bounced up onto her thigh.
    Relief flashed through her. She clutched him close.
    The boot steps came to a halt. She was suddenly pinned in the beam of a flashlight. When she looked up she saw a large dark shadow looming in the mist.
    “What the hell is going on here?” Cyrus said.
    “It’s sort of complicated,” Sedona said.
    She put down the rock and struggled to get to her feet.
    Cyrus reached down and helped her stand.
    The physical contact was a mistake. She knew it instantly but by then it was too late. She was in the midst of a post-burn buzz. The crash would come later, but for now all of her senses were at high-rez and not under full control.
    “Wait,” she gasped. “You don’t want to do this.”
    But Cyrus had already scooped her up into his arms. “Take