BooksBarbecue
Back Reverie Save as PDF
Chapters (53)
  1. Front Cover
  2. Letter from the Author
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright
  5. Contents
  6. • One •
  7. • Two •
  8. • Three •
  9. • Four •
  10. • Five •
  11. • Six •
  12. • Seven •
  13. • Eight •
  14. • Nine •
  15. • Ten •
  16. • Eleven •
  17. • Twelve •
  18. • Thirteen •
  19. • Fourteen •
  20. • Fifteen •
  21. • Sixteen •
  22. • Seventeen •
  23. • Eighteen •
  24. • Nineteen •
  25. • Twenty •
  26. • Twenty-One •
  27. • Twenty-Two •
  28. • Twenty-Three •
  29. • Twenty-Four •
  30. • Twenty-Five •
  31. • Twenty-Six •
  32. • Twenty-Seven •
  33. • Twenty-Eight •
  34. • Twenty-Nine •
  35. • Thirty •
  36. • Thirty-One •
  37. • Thirty-Two •
  38. • Thirty-Three •
  39. • Thirty-Four •
  40. • Thirty-Five •
  41. • Thirty-Six •
  42. • Thirty-Seven •
  43. • Thirty-Eight •
  44. • ∞ •
  45. • Thirty-Nine •
  46. • Forty •
  47. Epilogue
  48. Acknowledgments
  49. Excerpt from Be Dazzled
  50. One
  51. Two
  52. About the Author
  53. Back Cover

Kane snatched the rotting robes and yanked as hard as he could. The dagger skewed upward, caught in the hollow of Adeline’s jaw, and then wheeled away as Kane pulled harder. Together they fell to the ground, entrapped in the clinging fabric. Kane grabbed blindly at the knife, finding the sorcerer’s wrist and squeezing hard. The old man spat and whined, and next came the clatter of the dagger hitting the floor. Success! With a kick Kane dislodged himself from the robes, snatched up the weapon, and ran for Adeline.

Pinpricks of blood rolled down her neck like stray jewels, but nothing more. The dagger had only nicked her jaw.

“What are you doing?” she hissed.

“Saving you!”

“Wrong move, Kane.” Adeline flinched as Kane slashed at the chains. “I’m set. You should be—will you please be careful?”

“I’m trying!”

“Well try running!”

“What?”

“Running. Like, with your legs.”

“No, I heard you.”

Just then Adeline thrust her knee into Kane’s stomach, doubling him over in time for the sorcerer’s staff to whistle over his head. It smashed into the altar, shards of skull bouncing across the floor. Adeline had saved Kane, but the sorcerer’s hands fell on him, grabbing his shirt and tossing him into the center of the stage with inhuman strength. Kane landed too hard; his neck snapped back, and his head cracked against the obsidian floor. The dagger skittered away from his twitching hand, and he saw red.

Everything slowed. The sorcerer loomed over him, eyes hard with hate, cloak churning like volcanic smoke. He knelt and dragged a filthy finger across Kane’s upper lip. It came away coated in blood. He brought it to his mouth, sinking the bloody finger between his lips with relish. Then he smiled, showing Kane all his teeth. All five of them.

“Virgin,” the sorcerer said, and another dark twist gathered in the reverie.

He turned to the crowd and thrust the staff into the air.

“VIRGIN!”

The response shook the cavern, the reverie warping to accommodate this new path. The hysterical shrillness of the cheers seemed to fortify the sorcerer. He put a bony hand to his ear and leaned toward one half of the spectators. “Sacrifice!” screamed the men. He did this again, to the other side, which also chanted: “Sacrifice! Sacrifice!” He made a show of deliberating which side had been louder, then shrugged comically and gave each side another chance to outdo the other. It was the cheesy dramatics of a halftime performance at a minor-league sporting event. Kane, in his delirium, found himself wondering if the cheerleaders would be released for the purposes of tossing T-shirts into the crowd.

The sorcerer declared the right side the winner, and the resulting cheer was earsplitting. It ran through Kane, numbing him. He barely felt the sorcerer heaving him up and carrying him a short distance. Idly he wondered if it was getting hotter.