Dark Nights Read Free Page A

through hospital doors and had not ever left.
    Joie didn’t know if she truly believed in astral projection, but she had been having out-of-body experiences from the time she was a toddler. She had perfected her craft over the years, directing herself to fly away and leave her physical body behind when she didn’t want to be where she was. It was a useful, exhilarating gift, and all too real. Sometimes too real. Many times the places she found herself in were far more intriguing than where she’d left her body and of course, the danger was always in not finding her way back.
    She’d read numerous articles about astral projection and most seemed to happen to enlightened people, people of faith who believed in a higher, better realm. She was far more practical, dealing with the seamier side of life and finding her faith was in nature and the beauty of the wild, untouched places she sought out both on an astral plane and with her physical body when she had time off.
    The smell of the hospital was overpowering, making her stomach lurch. People moved around her fast, poking needles into her, talking in low voices, cutting her shirt away. She didn’t take painkillers as a rule and tried to tell them, but no one listened to her. An oxygen mask was slapped over her face. What was the use in staying in a place she didn’t want to be when she could roam the world in her mind? Whether she was actually there or not mattered very little. It felt real when she journeyed out of her body. She took a deep breath of the oxygen and let go of her physical body.
    She simply took herself away now, soaring free. She wanted to be outdoors, under the sky or beneath the earth in a world of subterranean beauty—it didn’t matter, as long as it wasn’t within the walls of a hospital.
    Joie felt weightless, free, skimming through the mountains she had studied so carefully. As she soared free, she planned a trip caving with her brother and sister as soon as the senator and his wife were safely back home. She crossed space. Smelled the rain. Felt cool and moist in the mist of the mountains. Far below her, she saw the entrance to a cave, spotlighted by the small sliver of moon that managed to peek around the thick cloud cover. Smiling, she dropped down to enter a world of crystal and ice. Whether she was dreaming or hallucinating didn’t matter; all she cared about was escaping from the pain of her wounds and the smell of the hospital.
    Carpathian Mountains
    T raian lay in the cool earth, gazing up at the high, cathedral-like ceiling. His body hurt in so many places, he just wanted to rest. The beauty of the cave was breathtaking and took his mind off his physical pain. The network of caves he’d entered deep beneath the earth was part of a huge subterranean city. Great waterfalls of ice cascaded down from ceiling to floor, some lapping around one another until it looked as if great bows of thick ice had gift-wrapped the entire cave he lay in.
    Despite the cold, some insects and bats dwelled in the realms above him, but he had gone deep, where few living creatures could exist. The cold helped to numb the pain and bring him a soothing sense of peace he so badly needed after the last few risings. In the far corner of the cave the formation actually looked like thick ice walls with a covering of ice clouds over them. As he worked at forcing some of the burning embers from his body he tried to imagine the forces it would take to forge such a dramatic thing of beauty deep beneath the earth.
    Traian turned his head and saw her. His heart nearly stopped and then began pounding. The breath left his lungs in a long rush. She was hovering just overhead to his left. She’d entered silently and somehow gotten past his safeguards. Had he been so exhausted that he’d forgotten such an important life-saving detail? Impossible. He could feel the weave, strong and in place. No one— nothing —should be able to get passed his safeguards.
    He studied the woman.