Something Deadly This Way Comes by Kim Harrison Read Free Book Online Page A

the ceiling lights. It billowed up around my knees, and, like a deadly gas, it hit me hard. My knees gave way, and I fell, one hand still holding the top of the dryer. The heat of it seemed to burn my fingers, and I couldn’t see. The blue stuff had gotten in my eyes and they were tearing. Suddenly I realized I wasn’t crumpled on the floor of the Laundromat with my fingertips warm on the dryer.
    I was in Tammy, her fingers burning, and she was terrified.
    Choking, hot air burned in my mouth, and my lungs ached. I couldn’t breathe. “Johnny!” I screamed, then hunched over, coughing. I fell, arms outstretched. It was dark, and I gasped when my cheek hit the carpet. The air down here was a blessed few degrees cooler, and I cried as I pulled it into my damaged lungs. I was dying. I had died before, and I knew the feeling though Tammy didn’t—the same blackness edging my vision, and the same lack of pain filled my arms and legs.
    No! I thought, confused. I had changed things! We had talked to Tammy! This couldn’t be the future, could it? Was there going to be a happy ending to this? There had to be. But the flash forward said otherwise, and by the lack of any blue haze, it looked like it was going to be tonight, not tomorrow. Damn it, I’d made things worse, not better.
    â€œJohnny!” I cried again, crawling to his door. I found it, reaching up to turn the knob and push the door open. A wave of sound rushed out over my head, and I cowered in the sudden heat.
    â€œTammy!” I heard him call, and I crawled forward, scared out of my mind. I could smell things burning, and my mind walled the horror away. Everything. Everything was on fire.
    And then I found him.
    He was blind with terror, but at my touch, he grasped me, and we clung together as the ceiling above us turned into a beautiful, rolling orange and red. It was mesmerizing, even as my eyelashes singed and my nose burned inside.
    â€œTammy, I’m scared,” Johnny whispered, coughing, and I held him. It was too late. We couldn’t get out. Crying, I rocked him, our backs to the wall beside his bed.
    â€œI’m here,” I whispered, Tammy’s last breath rasping as our twined thoughts were voiced by her alone. “You’re not alone. I’ve got you.”
    And then we looked up as a roaring sound of heat sucked a new breath of air into the room an instant before the ceiling gave way. Everything flashed red—
    I jumped, feeling as if someone had slapped me. Terrified, my eyes sprang open.
    â€œBarnabas!” I cried. He was crouched before me, his eyes intent. It was over. But what had happened? The memory of my heart was thudding after having been inside Tammy, and slowly it beat one last time and stopped. Her terror took longer to leave me, and I sat there clutching my cooling amulet as Nakita and Josh clustered around me in concern.
    â€œYou came back,” I said, thinking it sounded lame, and Barnabas shifted a few inches away. Standing, he extended his hand and pulled me, wobbling, to my feet.
    The humid air of the Laundromat seemed cool. Tears were dribbling from me. I slowly leaned back against the thumping dryer, my arms wrapped around myself as I started to shake, the tears steadily slipping from me. It was awful. So awful.
    â€œWhat happened?” Josh asked, but I couldn’t talk. Not yet. They had died. Both of them. This was so unfair. Johnny and Tammy had died with grace, supporting each other in a way that was beautiful and showed the best of a human soul, but they had died. It wasn’t what I had wanted. Her soul might be saved, but it was the end of her life that had bought its purity.
    â€œSomething changed?” Nakita asked, but by her tone of voice, she knew it wasn’t good.
    I looked past them at the empty Laundromat as if it was a dream and would flake into nothing and return me to that hell of existence, the fear, the hopelessness, the love for her