Three Parts Dead Read Online Free PDF

screamed. Not a normal scream of pain, but a deep and blind cry as reason deserted her. Of all the screams cataloged in the encyclopedic audio library of the Hidden Schools, Tara’s bore the closest resemblance to the scream of a man whose abdomen was being devoured by a jagged-clawed insect that wore a child’s face.
    After the scream came oblivion. She was simultaneously a tiny feather of a body drifting down to a rolling ocean, and a diffuse cloud of soul, one with the sky, one with the wind. A thousand prickling tender touches lit upon her, as if she was caught in a rainstorm and the raindrops were love.
    That’s new, she thought, before she hit the water.
    *
    Abelard sat in the confessional, smoking. He hadn’t been able to stop for two days. If he so much as paused between inhalations, the shakes began. He could barely catch a half hour’s sleep at a time before he woke, trembling and desperate for a drag from the cigarette that lay, ember somehow still glowing, by his bedside.
    He should have been tired. Maybe he was, but the shakes were worse than exhaustion. They manifested first in his fingertips and toes, then crept up the limbs, taking root in his forearms and calves before clutching at his groin and chest. He didn’t know what might happen if he let them grip his heart. He didn’t want to find out.
    “It’s normal,” the Cardinal’s doctor had told him when he reported his tremors the previous evening. “More intense than I expected, but normal. As an initiate of the Discipline of the Eternal Flame, you smoke between three and five packs of cigarettes a day. God’s grace has protected you from the ill effects of tobacco addiction, but under the current circumstances, His beneficence has been withdrawn.”
    The doctor’s advice did not make Abelard feel better. Deep nausea clenched his stomach as he listened, and had not left him since. Even here, in God’s own confessional, he felt empty, deserted. The doctor warned him to quit, or cut back, but Abelard would not listen. He was dedicated to his Lord, no matter what.
    The confessional was cramped and spare, walled to his right by a fine grille. His side was well lit, and the confessor’s side dark. He knew his confessor’s identity, though. Not strictly permitted, but this was an unprecedented situation.
    “Tell me, my son,” said Senior Technical Cardinal Gustave, “did you notice anything strange before the alarms sounded?” His deep voice resounded in the confines of their confessional. A Church leader for decades, head of the Council of Cardinals, Gustave was accustomed to addressing great halls and inveighing against injustice. Years of leadership and Church politics had rendered him less deft at supporting a single troubled soul. He was trying, but he was tired.
    Abelard’s biceps shook, and his thighs. Hold, dammit, he told himself. The Cardinal is watching. The confessing man sits bereft of God’s grace, seeking restitution, and does not deserve the taste of flame. You lasted before until the spasms reached your shoulders and the fork of your legs. You can do it again. “There was nothing out of the ordinary, Father.” His lips were still dry. He licked them once more. The Cardinal remains steadfast. Why can’t you? “Nothing out of the ordinary, on the technical side. All readouts nominal. Steam pressure low, but within tolerance.”
    “You reported that the Most Holy was reluctant to answer your prayer?”
    The heavy scratch of Cardinal Gustave’s pen sounded like stone tearing. The confessional walls loomed on all sides. “You know how it goes, Father.” Abelard gestured weakly with his cigarette. The ember at its tip danced a trace in the air.
    “I know many things, my son,” Gustave said, “but there are outsiders approaching to help us, and they will not be familiar with the particulars of serving our God.”
    “Yes, Father.” If only he would turn away for an instant, or blink. “I … Ah … Um.” Gustave’s