Number of the Beast (Paladin Cycle, Book One) Read Online Free PDF

dreams.”
    Atticus stood and headed
for the ladder. “I have to return to my post.”
    Venora stepped toward him.
Her lips formed into that trademark smirk that could charm a
vulture into eating figs. “If you don’t believe the Beast will show
itself then come with me when I leave.” She wrapped her arms around
him. Her naked lips touched his.
    Was Elder Cai’s brandy
this sweet and intoxicating?
    He firmly pushed her to
arm’s length. “Calm yourself, Nora. We cannot allow our carnal
wants to cloud our judgments. We must continue to court as we are
now, until I turn of proper age to wed you in holy
matrimony.”
    Though he spoke the words
like a true gentleman who had mastered the elusive art of chivalry,
he secretly wanted nothing more than to bed her right there in the
haystack. To see the light of dusk bathe over her naked flesh would
have been sheer bliss.
    Venora turned and fetched
her training sword from the straw-covered wooden floor. “I do not
belong here. This world needs me somewhere else that is not New
Mexico—that is not the Order of Abel.”
    The explicit sorrow in her
tone brought a shiver to Atticus. “Venora, please.” He crossed the
loft and reached for her bare shoulder. But she darted away and
with one swift motion leaped through the aperture.
    “ Blasted maiden!” One of
these days she would be his undoing.

Chapter Five
    A bright light spiraled
from somewhere deeper inside the forest and in the direction that
Alamo had run. Just past the Hangman’s tree, named for its thick
horizontal branch, Amy paused to catch her breath. Dizziness
blurred her vision. A violent pain skewed her gut forcing her to
clutch her stomach. Hot vomit seared her throat as she puked on a
wad of tangled roots and vines. With her forearm, she wiped
remnants of the puke from her mouth. Heat flashed through her body.
What the heck was wrong with her?
    Female. Hear
me!
    Amy glanced back,
searching for the source of the strange and deep voice, but she saw
nothing unusual. Years had passed since the last time she heard a
voice in her head, and this one didn’t sound familiar, nor
friendly.
    With the bottom of her tank top she
wiped flecks of blood from arm that had been spawned by bothersome
briar bushes.
    She had no time for
psychosis right now, and chose to ignore the unbridled voice.
“Alamo! Come back here you stupid mutt!”
    The dang no-see-um buzzing
her ear was the only response to her plea.
    If she wasn’t a good
Christian woman, she’d love to spout some choice words. Instead she
bit her lower lip and flung herself through more briars and
bramble. “Alamo!”
    Heed these callings. The
Beast’s hour comes near.
    Stumbling, Amy took a hard
dive to the ground. She scanned her surroundings. Nothing but
overgrowth and the stretching darkness that gloomed the
woods.
    Forsake the mongrel.
Return now to your abode.
    Amy slapped hands over her ears,
trying to drown the voice echoing in her mind.
    The voice seethed in
coarse, throaty animalistic tones.
    Was this it? Was this the
moment that she’d go off the deep end, never to return from the
brink of sanity? Move over Aunt Carol.
    Hear me,
female.
    “ Female is my gender,” she
hissed, submitting to her derangement. “Not my name.”
    I come to thwart the end
of all worlds.
    “ The only thing you’re
thwarting is my grip on reality.” Amy shook her head.
    Vicki, Shane’s dead
sister, was the last voice she’d heard, having landed her in the
looney bin. Whatever...whoever this voice was, she wanted no part
of it. Her past had taught her that strange voices only led to an
asylum and she very much liked living in Buckeye...with Shane...not
under lock and key...and definitely not doped up on
Seroquel.
    “ You’re not real.” Her
legs trembled as she hugged her knees into her chest. Rocking on
the ground, she repeated, “You’re not real.”
    For several moments an eerie quietness
held the forest still. She reluctantly got to her feet, wishing
more than