All Through the Night by Shannon McKenna, Lori Foster, Suzanne Forster, Thea Devine Read Free Book Online Page A

was the guide. He would be in every single copy that Genesis put out, wouldn’t he? All she had to do was get her computer fixed and ask them to E-mail her a new copy of “Discover the Secret, Sensual You!”
It would be Jean in there, wouldn’t it?
Somehow she didn’t think so.
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Chapter Four
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“Kerry, come back and play. It’s lonely in here without you.”
Kerry heard the distant plea through a smothering veil of sleep. She was in deep slumber and might not have awakened at all if the hauntingly familiar voice hadn’t coaxed her repeatedly.
“Kerry, come back and play—”
“Play?” she breathed into her pillow.
“Kerry—it’s me.”
She rolled over heavily and laid there in the darkness, vaguely aware that someone was about, and that she was too groggy even to open her eyes. The pale glow permeating her eyelids made her wonder if she’d left the television on in the living room. But she never used the television. She was always on her computer.
“Kerry, it’s lonely—”
Her computer? She forced open her eyes to an aura of flickering blue light. It was her computer. The monitor was on. How could that be?
“Kerry—”
“Who’s there?” Suddenly the voice was perilously close, a male voice.
“It’s me,” he said. “I’m here with you.”
“With me?” Kerry could see nothing except the pulsing light, but her heart exploded with adrenaline. She dug her heels into the mattress and reared up, shoving herself back against the headboard.
“Who is it? Who’s there?” She clutched the comforter to her body like a shield, unable to do more than whisper. What was going on? Who was there? Her eyes strained to make sense of things, but all she could see was a dark form silhouetted in the doorway.
The voice wasn’t coming from the living room.
It wasn’t coming from her computer.
There was a man standing right there in her bedroom—a tall, silent man, haloed by spikes of blue light. If this was a bad dream, it was a very, very bad one.
“Who are you? What are you doing in my house?”
“I’m sorry if I frightened you,” he said.
His voice. She knew that voice.
“Tell me who you are.”
“You know who I am.”
“Tell me who you are!”
“I’m your guide, Kerry. It’s Jean.”
She couldn’t see him well enough to distinguish his features, but she did know that voice. She’d been mesmerized by it. Hypnotized.
“Jean from the video game?”
“I’ve come, Kerry. I’m here. You can see me, can’t you?”
She didn’t know whether to be incredulous or horrified. The chill she felt cut to her bones. Either someone was playing a very cruel joke, or she had lost her mind.
“You can’t be here. You’re not real. You’re pixels, hundreds of them.”
“Not anymore. And it’s all because of you.”
Kerry didn’t know what to do. Terror gripped her as she tried to reason things through. This had happened to her before when she tried to escape her problems with sleep. She dropped fast, deep, and dreamed profusely. Wild flights of hope and freedom. Often she dreamed that she was free of the fears and could walk out her front door. This was one of those. It was wish fulfillment, Freudian wish fulfillment. Either that or she’d taken too much L-tyrosine.
“You’re not really here,” she told him. “You’re some figment of my loneliness and frustration, and I’d like you to go.”
“I’m not a figment, Kerry, feel me, pinch me. I’m real.”
“No! Stay there!” She threw up her hands, but he was in the room, at the foot of her bed, before she could stop him.
“No further,” she told him. “ Please , I believe you.”
Her grandmother’s antique lamp sat next to her bed. She stretched over and tried to turn it on, but the key was loose and the lamp wouldn’t light. Frantically she twisted it again. Maybe she’d shorted out the whole house. But, then, how could the computer be working?
She kept one eye on the man at the foot of her bed as she felt for a