James Axler – Demons of Eden

He didn’t have the opportunity to gauge the accuracy of his shot; a heavy weight slammed into his back with lung-emptying, bone-jarring, teeth-loosening force. Ryan was bowled over on his face, the wind crushed from his body.

Gasping, he levered himself onto his back and looked directly into the blazing gold-green eyes of a beast snarling in murderous fury. Ryan tried lo swing his blaster up and around, but a wide, claw-tipped paw eclipsed everything else in his line of sight. Then he knew what oblivion felt and looked like.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Krysty reeled. She staggered several paces back from the table, dropping the drinking gourd on the floor.

Alarmed, Doc rose from his chair and reached out to steady her.

She waved off his hand, her eyes wide and full of fear. In a thin, aspirated voice, she cried, “Ryan!”

Jak, Doc, Mildred and Sunlata stared at her in bewilderment. During the past hour or so, they had been playing arcahey , the Sioux game of bone-casting. Sunlata, the girl who had acted as their food server, had elected herself their one-person entertainment committee, as well.

Krysty had kept the golden wafer by her elbow and, as the night wore on, she consulted her wrist chron every few minutes. An hour shy of midnight, a chaotic explosion of emotions, sensations and colors bulled its way into her mind. There were so many, so fast, she was unable to sort them out. The mental-emotional cacophony lasted but a split second, but she knew, more by the texture of the thoughts than anything else, who had transmitted them.

Ignoring the questions from her friends, she snatched up the wafer and pressed it against her forehead. She didn’t concentrate. She lowered her mental barriers, taking deep, relaxing breaths, waiting for a pattern to emerge.

Mother Sonja had taught her the technique of activating her “brow chakra,” the seat of the sixth sense, the third eye of mystic legend. Through the opening of this chakra, this biological power-point, she possessed the capacity to “read” emotional communications.

Nothing came to her but flashes of color, psychic spillover from her friends’ anxiety and worry. She saw-felt only a void, a lightless tunnel stretching past eternity and through infinity.

Krysty lowered the wafer. It was slick from the perspiration beading her forehead. She opened her eyes and realized she was lying on one of the beds. Mildred sat beside her, holding her left wrist and timing her pulse, her face etched in lines of worry.

“Krysty! Goddammit, girl, I thought you were dying. Your pulse and respiration rates slowed to a crawl!”

“How long?” Krysty’s throat was dirt dry, and her tongue felt like old shoe leather.

“At least twenty minutes. Your entire body locked up, like you were having an epileptic seizure. Sunlata and the others went to fetch the medicine man or shaman.”

“No need.” Krysty sat up, and a wave of pain surged through her head, then faded. She knew what had happened, what her subconscious had done. She had only rarely entered a “far-seeing” trance, primarily because her mother hadn’t fully trained her in protecting herself while in such a state. When her mind had expanded its awareness, her hind-brain took over, slowing her metabolism and reducing her need for oxygen. Leaving the trance state was more difficult than entering into it.

Jak, Doc, Sunlata and a skinny man wearing headgear made of feathers and buffalo horns rushed through the door. It was the same man who had participated in the Thanking Dance the night before.

Before Krysty could stand, the shaman began to skip in front of her, singing unintelligible words in a discordant voice. He shook a set of feathered diamondback’s rattles over her head.

Impatiently Krysty elbowed him aside and got to her feet. Speaking loudly to be heard over the crack-voiced chanting, she said, “Ryan is in trouble, and more than likely, so is J.B.”

Mildred sighed and muttered something.

“What?”

“I said I was afraid you’d say that!”

“He tried to contact me through the sender,” Krysty went on. “Since I didn’t have mine working, I couldn’t pick up any details. I tried transmitting to him. Nothing.”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean anything dire,” Doc replied, casting an irritated glance at the shaman. The skinny man was now hopping up and down on one foot, chanting louder.