Forbidden (The Preternaturals) Read Online Free PDF Page A

having drunk her blood, as well as the vaguest sense
that it had been the best thing he’d ever tasted. Something was
wrong with that thought.
    “So this is where you go when you die?” He knew how things worked, but
his training hadn’t included an afterlife diagram.
    “It’s a sorting area, so to speak,” the man said.
    Hadrian thought that was an odd reply. “Then why am I the only one here?
Don’t many thousands of people die every day? Where are they?”
    “You humans all think the same way. You’re so used to being bound in
place and time, you have no idea the vastness of what is out there.
Yes, many others are dying and encountering their own version of this
room. Do you think we’re so poorly organized that we’d have you
all in the same place, waiting indefinitely to be dealt with?
Besides, this could all be happening in your mind, couldn’t it?”
The man stepped down from the podium, collecting a large book that
rested open upon it.
    As he passed, Hadrian saw the book had his name on it, and he wondered
if the stories inside were mostly good or bad.
    “There’s nothing for me to do here, so I’ll be on my way. I may as well take
a break before my next assignment.” The short man grimaced. “It’s
such a waste of time when they do this to me, but you know… for a
while, it can go either way. But the choice has been made, and
there’s nothing I can do for you now.”
    His gait was uneven as he shuffled across the floor to one of the golden
doors and slipped a key inside the lock. As he pushed the door open
he turned back to Hadrian. “Don’t try any of the doors. We have
better security than it might appear on the surface. Oh and… when
you get back there, try not to think you’re too invincible. Some
day we might be having another conversation, and it would be a shame
to have your evolution slowed by this detour.”
    “Wait!” Hadrian’s voice echoed off the walls. His plea was useless. The
door shut and the lock turned. Was this all happening in his mind? It
must be.
    Most likely his body was somewhere in or near the church, waiting for this
transition to complete and his essence to come back. So where was he?
Locked inside his head, while he thought he was locked inside this
too-bright room? Or was he somewhere else entirely?
    Only a few moments passed in existential crisis before a thick, black
smoke formed in the center of the room near the podium. As the smoke
grew thicker it made a hissing sound, then it started to spin like a
cyclone until it transformed into something that looked solid
enough—a demon.
    The demon was a large, shiny black, and strangely dressed like Father
Hadrian. The beast was larger than him by almost a foot in height and
who knew how much in breadth? His eyes glowed a fiery red, and inside
his mouth were the nastiest, sharpest teeth Hadrian had ever seen.
    The priest felt around in his pockets for a cross, to no avail. He held a
hand up to the demon and started to chant.
    “ Exorcizo te, immundissime spiritus, omnis incursio adversarii, omne phantasma, omnis legio…”
    The demon laughed. “That won’t work on me. I’m you.”
    What? Father Hadrian was beginning to lean toward dream .
Perhaps he’d gotten a bad burrito from the strip. Maybe the part
where Angeline had revealed herself as a vampire and bitten him had
been a dream as well. And the sex. The sex had been a dream. It was
just one long dream. None of this could be real.
    The hulking monster barreled toward him, his footsteps echoing in the
vast space. Ordinarily, Father Hadrian wasn’t the type to run from
a fight. Even as a priest, he could and had stood his ground—not
that most had wanted to mess with him having both an intimidating
presence and God on his side. But he had no weapons now, and the one
demon-fighting ritual he knew appeared to have no effect, so he ran.
    The doors went on forever even though that couldn’t be true since the
room was a circle. He could see the whole thing