Revenant Read Online Free PDF Page B

sense it. There. Ahead of us. A heavy, heady essence of old things. Worn things. Used. Time marching across the planes.
    Joe snapped his fingers in my face, and I blinked, looking at him. His eyebrows arched in question. Rhonda looked concerned.
    “What is it?”
    “She senses me,” came the melodic voice of Lex behind Joe and Rhonda. They turned, parting in front of me so that I could see her with my Wraith eyes.
    I don’t know what I expected—having sensed her power. Or was it something else? She looked as she had that first night. Tall, flawless, with perfect movement as if each step were a practiced variation of the next. But there was something else . . . something . . .
    Old.
    Lex moved toward us, her body never making the bobbing motion of walking like a normal mortal would. She glided closer, her lab coat pristine as it moved with her, as if it were a part of her.
    Joe waved at me to get my attention, and I looked at him. He raised his eyebrows, and signed, “Is that right? You can sense her?”
    I nodded, my gaze drawn back to her.
    “She senses my age—” Lex said, blinking lazily at me, looking down at the child who plays where she doesn’t belong. “And the kinship we share on the First Tier.”
    That jogged me out of my catatonia. “First Tier?”
    Rhonda spoke up. “It’s what the First Borns call the Abysmal plane.”
    Lex’s eyes grew amused. “It is what it is. My home.” Abruptly, her face split with a smile, and she held out her hands, her expression growing serious again fast. “Come—I have something to show you. And perhaps the little Irin child can confirm what I suspect.”
    She turned, and I glared at Rhonda, who shrugged and followed Joe into the examination room. What I did notice this time meeting up with Lex was that her voice sometimes had this duality to it. Like there were two voice tracks, speaking in unison.
    Lex had the regular room with its stainless-steel tables, drains, and pipes. Areas for washing the bodies and diagnosing cause of death. But just behind that, past the rows of toe tags, was the “other” examination room. This room was marked private, and according to Joe, no one—not even the Chief Medical Examiner—went inside.
    Actually, once through those doors, I couldn’t blame him for not wanting to go in there.
    The room itself was small—not so much a broom closet but close. Enough space for an examination table—with straps, I might add—and a shelf full of things I doubt any medical professional in today’s world thought about using. It actually looked straightened up today. The walls were painted with symbols I’d only seen in Rhonda’s book. And in the book Dags carried inside of him.
    Not that they meant anything to me.
    On the table lay a nude girl—nude from the waist up. Seems showing breasts was now considered the norm. How European.
    Her eyes were open and milky white—telltale sign of death. Her skin was chalky and her lips blue. But what got my attention wasn’t the color of her skin or her hair—but the intricate markings carved over every inch of her exposed flesh from the collarbone down.
    ... help . . .
    We gathered around her, with Lex at her head. I glanced across the body at Rhonda, whose eyes had grown to the size of chicken eggs. She pointed at the body, her finger getting close to the flesh.
    “No!” Lex snapped, and grabbed at Rhonda’s wrist with lightning speed.
    Joe, Rhonda, and I all jumped. I never even saw Lex’s hand move—it was just there—keeping Rhonda’s hand above the body.
    “Sorry,” Lex said as she let go. “But the ritual is still active. If you look with your sight, you can see the essence lingering.”
    Rhonda swallowed and pulled her hand back. I watched her as she narrowed her eyes and looked at the body. Joe and I glanced at each other—him shrugging. Obviously, he wasn’t as interested, having been there a while already. “Oh . . . you’re right. There’s a . . .” She straightened up