The Reverence of One: Book Three of the Shadow Series Read Free

couch; his eyelids partially open revealing the bottom half his dilated pupils as his eyes rolled up into his head.
    Nicole ha d found Travis at a bar in down town Kansas City . She was trashed and he was wasted, and from there, the mistakes snowballed. She refused to call him her boyfriend when in fact he was nothing more than a live in dealer. Still, she’d done things for him in the recent months that, in another place and time, she would have found deplorable. These things were never done out of love or caring, but always with the end goal of getting another fix.
    The first time Travis had ever injected her with heroin, she was terrified. Though he’d tried for a couple of weeks to get her to try it, she was able to resist; knowing that the drug had killed so many in the past was her salvation. Depression would be her demise.
    After what seemed like an eternity of nights filled with nightmares about what had happened in Lincoln , and the love she’d lost with Test, her strength gave out. As the needle entered her arm for the first time, she didn’t care if it killed her or not. She just wanted t he pain to end. Death didn’t come that night, but a lapse in reality did , and from that point on, that was the only thing that drove her.
    As she stepped carefully through the living room, she came to the end table where Travis’s paraphernalia rested. The top of the end table was made of g lass which was covered in scratch es from where razor blades had been used to chop up the meth or cocaine that was also a main stay of theirs. Sitting next to a spoon, a lighter, and a used syringe, was an empty baggie that she knew hours before contained the heroin she so desperately needed. Tossing the baggie on top of Travis, she rolled her eyes and wiped the sweat from her forehead.
    She began to rummage through the apartment, checking each of their normal hiding places for anything that could give her the escape that she so desperately needed. Running out of options, s he entered the bedroom, the only bedroom, and began to dig through the pile of clothes that was in the bottom of the closet. And then she saw it.
    In the corner lay a tiny clear bag with a solitary pea sized white rock inside. It wasn’t supposed to be there, but from experience, she knew that Travis had failed to take everything out of his clothes from time to time, and this was far from the first time she’d discovered a treat on the closet floor. She never told him though; it was hers for the taking.
    She took the small rock of meth out of the bag and set it on top of a cd case that was sitting on the dresser. She opened the case which housed a razor blade , intended for just such an occasion. Ideally, she would chop up the white powder until it was fine and powdery, but she didn’t have the patience to wait; she needed her fix. After breaking the rock down into smaller granules, small enough to inhale, she reached into her shoe and pulled out a ten dollar bill. She’d become smart in that in the past, when she’d use heavily, she’d wak e up with all of her cash gone. She suspected Travis, but she had no way of knowing for sure. She rolled the bill until it was a tight tube that would fit into her nostril and then leaned down to the line of powder.
    As the meth entered her sinuses, the initial burn made her eyes tear up, and then she could taste the drug begin to drip down the back of her throat as she swallowed . “ Hurry up ,” she thought to herself.
    She sat on the bed and waited. Meth treated her differently than it did most others. Instead of making her jittery or jumpy, it placed her in a mellow state, one that allowed her to sit and listen to a Mazzy Star album over and over again without the need for anything but a glass of water.
    As the first si gn of the drug began to make its elf know n , her scalp tingling, she smiled as the sensation overtook her. The sun streamed through a crack in the curtains and, as she la y down on the bed, she pressed