Echo of Redemption Read Online Free PDF

question in my eyes. “Never know when you might be in need of an intensive care unit.”
    “Garrett knew about this? Because if so, it leads me to question why he operated on my brother on his dining room table.” We lay Nikos down in the center of the bed. He doesn’t respond.
    “Garrett has seen my collection, but we were both under the general impression that if he didn’t act immediately to stabilize your brother there would be no need for any service I could provide.”
    “His color isn’t so good.” Ash. No other way to describe it.
    George is a step ahead of me, setting up a saline line. A second bag is added to the tree. Antibiotics. And a third.
    “What’s that one?”
    “Anesthesia. I want him to sleep through the initial withdrawal.” He acts quickly, attaching lines, monitors, and restraints. When he looks up at me, I know he has done all he can, at least for now. “He’s going to need some blood. I’ll start a line on you, if that’s okay?”
    I nod, feeling like he might have done this a time or two. It seems the doctor has his share of secrets too. A second later he has swabbed my arm, jabbed me with a needle and my blood is filling a bag. I breathe a sigh of relief, thankful for the friends I have. I stockpile artillery, they store medical supplies. It seems we’re a better match than I’d have ever believed.
    “Be thankful Garrett was home tonight. From what I saw, a hospital somewhere is missing out on some amazing talent. And , I’m fairly certain you wouldn’t have called nine-one-one.”
    I don’t comment as George leaves me alone with Nikos, but I am very grateful. If not for Garrett, my brother would have been better off dying on the dining room table than being turned over to the authorities. Bending, I kiss his forehead. “You’re going to live to see another day, Nikos. Believe that.”

“Oh, haggard mind, groping darkly through the past; incapable of detaching itself from the miserable present; dragging its heavy chain of care through imaginary feasts and revels, and scenes of awful pomp; seeking but a moment’s rest among the long-forgotten haunts of childhood, and the resorts of yesterday; and dimly finding fear and horror everywhere!”
    Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

Chapter 5
    Nikos
    Flames lick my flesh while eight shades of agony wrap spiny tendrils of ice through my head, my veins…my tissue. Screams rent the air but I’m afraid to look for the source, fearful of finding someone in a worse condition than mine. Evil lurks in the shadows. I feel it coming for me. Laughing taunts whisper. Too late for redemption. Too late. Too late. Darkness has swallowed me whole. Red, beady eyes stare at me. Whispers haunt me, “We call you to be judged, son of Aristotle Socrates Velouchiotis.”
    “Leave me be!”
    I fear hell has finally claimed my soul.
    “Satan! Be gone from here.”
    I am not alive, I am not dead. Since I’m familiar enough with the differences of each, I realize I’m neither even though I seem to have forgotten my name, my purpose, my plan.
    A robed, dark figure hovers over a book, reading my sins. One by one he names the people I’ve killed. I want to scream at him, “Get on with it! Announce your verdict already!” but I am too afraid of what comes after death to not gratefully accept this limited reprieve.
    “Vladislav Lokshina.”
    I recognize the name as a young reporter who had uncovered military corruption which he’d connected to the WODC, which actually involved their agent Liam Dubh working as King Cobra. Vladislav was my first assassination working as Cobra’s Executioner. Plenty of time…
    Hundreds of names later the shadows come for me. “No! No!”
    I have to escape. I struggle against tight bonds without any real form as I am forced down a long, dark tunnel. Fire licks at my heels. I have been condemned.
    “God! Please! Hear me!” I drop to my knees, refusing to go farther but am dragged to my final destination. Scratching