Stone's Kiss Read Online Free PDF Page A

surroundings. The kitchen looked normal. She wasn’t sure what she sought, but nothing in this room jogged her memory. Sitting up, a wave of dizziness swamped her. She curled her fingers around the table edge in a death grip. The deep pounding of her heart and the crackle of white noise hummed in her ears. She blinked once, and again.
    The room came into focus. Okay, that’s better. I can do this , she thought. No point postponing the inevitable. She jumped down from the table and wobbled around until her legs remembered they had bones in them. It felt like she’d donated half her blood to the blood bank. The thought of blood summoned an image of her grove, her favorite tree dripping bloody gore onto the ground. Her mind shied away from the vision.
    She took in the room again, and noticed something she’d missed before. A thick gold bracelet sat abandoned on the floor. Bracelet was too small a word to describe the heavy chunk of gold and jewels sitting on the tiles. She was reaching for it, her fingers poised to curl around it, when she saw the blood smeared on the floor next to it.
    More blood marred the bracelet, staining some of the intricate knotwork along its one side. Her eyes swung back to the smudges on the floor. There were other smudges, further apart, and they headed toward the living room. It was too odd. Those smudges, they couldn’t be tracks. Not unless a velociraptor walked the earth again and it happened to come into her kitchen following the scent of good baking.
    Yet there they were: tracks the size of a small dinosaur, blood smeared and marching off into the depths of her house.
    Out. She had to get out. Maybe then the nightmare would end. She eased her way across the kitchen floor, careful of squeaky floorboards and the groans of an old house. She didn’t want to face what made those tracks. Now that she had a goal, reaching the back door as quietly as possible, she could control the panic lurking at the edges of her mind.
    The doorknob turned under her hand. As she pulled open the door, it loosed a groan fit for a haunted house on All Hollow’s Eve. She threw herself through the doorway and slammed square into … nothing? Her breath escaped in a grunt.
    Stunned, she pulled back and rubbed her shoulder. Luckily, the abused shoulder, and not her face, had taken the brunt of the impact. She ran her hands across the entrance and saw a nebulous multihued blue light swirling around her fingertips where they made contact with the barrier. It was not unlike the oily surface of a soap bubble, with its cascade of colors.
    Words solidified in her mind.
    Ward. A spell for protection.
    Where the hell did that bit of information come from? Her newly acquired knowledge was scarier than the blue ward–thingy.
    On a hunch, she checked the windows and found them blocked by more of the strange substance. She braced her hands against it and pushed. Nothing. She might as well have tried pushing through concrete. Looking out beyond the pale barrier blocking the window, she could see her maze in the distance. Scattered lumps dotted the lawn, some in plain view while others remained partially hidden by the garden’s tall ornamentals grasses. Bodies. She swallowed hard and looked again to be certain. No, body parts.
    The barrier her mind had erected to protect its self from the traumatic memories vanished, and everything from that afternoon flooded back. She’d been attacked by monsters, wolfmen, feral cat–like women, and sallow–skinned creatures with hunger in their eyes. She remembered a power flooding her, and then joy at the feel of the stone warming and softening under her hands. The fog of mixed–up memories ended.
    Fear fluttered in her stomach and her breath hitched up a notch. Nothing she remembered led her to how she came to awake on the kitchen table with a strange blue light preventing escape. With another glance at the bodies in the garden, she decided she didn’t want to go outside anymore, not when