Burning Darkness Read Online Free PDF Page A

others.”
    A few phone calls later and he returned. “Everyone’s fine. We won’t know what he saw until he wakes up. That should be in about five minutes.”
    “Eric! He’s bleeding!” She started crying, pulling Lucas against her chest. Blood trickled from his nose. “Get me a tissue!”
    He brought a box, and she dabbed at the blood.
    A stab of panic hit him. “Amy . . . he’s bleeding from his ear, too.”
    Her yelp of fear shot right through him. “This is killing him. I can’t . . . I have to . . .”
    “Wait it out. Let’s see what he says when he comes out.”
    They waited, but he didn’t come out. Her frantic gaze went from the clock to Lucas, like a mad tennis match. Twenty minutes. Thirty minutes. Forty. He watched, his chest frozen.
    “He’s not coming out.” She felt for his pulse. “It’s so shallow. I can’t go through this again.” She looked at Eric, pleading with her eyes.
    “I won’t do it.”
    “I’m not asking you to.” She kept looking at him.
    “You want my blessing?”
    “Your agreement that it has to be done.”
    He looked at Lucas, willing him to wake so he wouldn’t have to make a choice. This was the worst storm ever. If it killed him . . . “Do it.”
    She ran out of the room. He watched Lucas while she was gone, and his body tightened as though electrical currents were going through him, too. He wiped at the blood continuing to drip down Lucas’s face.
    Amy returned with a small box and pulled out one of two syringes. She stared at Lucas, torn but resolute, then looked at the bluish liquid in the syringe: the antidote. She had gotten it from the botanist who found the substance given to their parents to boost their abilities . . . what the Offspring had inherited. Even the botanist admitted it was unstable. One of his sons had lost his abilities after taking it—the one who went psycho. The other son hadn’t. Lucas had refused to take it, fearful of losing his ability to foresee the future, which helped him protect Amy.
    “He probably won’t ever forgive you.” He met her tear-filled gaze. “You know that, don’t you?”
    “It’s not fair. We’ve been through so much. I’ve almost lost him twice.”
    He took her hand. It should be him breaking down, not Lucas. “No matter what happens, your love changed him, made him stronger, better. What you two have . . . it’s incredible.”
    “I know.” Her voice was a raw whisper. “I’m going to lose him either way. I’d rather he be alive and mad at me than . . .”
    It killed him to watch the man who was like a brother to him and the woman who, as it turned out, was his half sister, in agony. She had risked her life for Lucas, and he’d done the same. Eric didn’t understand that kind of love, but it stunned him anyway. Watching the little ways they touched each other, the looks they traded that smacked of such intimacy, it made him feel he should leave the room. Sometimes it made him ache, though it could have just been heartburn.
    “I’m sorry, Lucas,” she said on a whisper, pulling his arm into position. “I love you.” She pushed the plunger, and the liquid disappeared from the syringe. She removed the needle and threw it into the box as though it had burned her fingers.
    Eric pulled her to her feet and held her, and she cried in his arms.
    Some time passed. He didn’t know how much. She disengaged and lay down next to Lucas. “He’ll sleep for twenty-four hours. That’s what they told me would happen. He’ll wake . . . and he’ll be okay.”
    Lucas did seem relaxed now, and the bleeding had stopped. Eric could only nod, but he wasn’t so sure. Taking the antidote was as scary as going psycho.
    She held onto Lucas but looked at him. “Why are you dressed? You still can’t sleep, can you?” Her gaze flicked to the box. “Eric—”
    “I’m not taking that stuff. Unless I’m bleeding like Lucas. Dying.” He wasn’t going to chance losing his abilities until Sayre