Rising Darkness

Chapter Eighteen

THE CREATURE CLUNG to the underside of the car outside the cabin. It was a tattered handkerchief of shadow, a dark spirit from the psychic realm that liked to feed on the negative energies of pain, anger, hate and despair. Intelligence or species didn’t matter to it. Pain was pain.

The dismal cluster of gas stations had been an adequate feeding ground for it, where it lay in wait for travelers. Plenty were either strong, happy or well adjusted enough, but there was always someone passing through who was grieving or suicidal, or riddled with the wormwood of hate and resentment.

The creature had first been attracted to the woman who had bled with such beautiful, agonizing brightness, but it had been afraid to approach too close to the fierce, dominant presence that traveled with her.

Then the dragon had come and it had healed the woman with its terrible, shining power. The creature had cowered underneath the Ford, staying still and silent, for, other than the ability to drain creatures that were already weakened, it had almost no power. It was nothing more than a small scavenger. One exhalation of the dragon’s breath could incinerate it in an instant. When the dragon left, it had nearly left as well, but it was a greedy little spirit and the two people it followed were not only potent. They were volatile as well.

Unable to leave the promise of such alluring pain, the creature had attached itself to the undercarriage of the car. It sniffed at the emotions of the people inside and hoped to catch them unguarded.

When they stopped traveling and went inside the cabin, it continued to wait, for it could sense the ferocious emotions that swirled around them.

Then there was a maddening, delicious upsurge of pain, and it came, not from the woman, but from the man. The creature detached from the car’s undercarriage and drifted over to the cabin window, hovering at the hot psychic scent, too frightened of the warrior to draw any closer and too far away to feed.