The Phoenix Conspiracy

Chapter 17

  Calvin’s sleep was haunted by visions of terror.

  His heart thundered as he raced down an endless corridor of charcoal gray. All around him were nightmarish images of people in the throes of death. Blood painted on every wall and door. Corpses everywhere. People reduced to mutilated empty husks, bleeding themselves pale. Frail as shadows. It choked him. And he froze in his own cold sweat, writhing until he escaped. Trinity. Trinity. Trinity.

  Christine!

  Panting and convulsing, he awoke in his own dark bedroom with icy shivers. His sheets lay in a crumpled, tangled mess on the floor. He sat up in a start, feeling light-headed as his eyes blanked over, and, for an instant, he was sure he would pass out again. But the fear and reality of the whole experience gripped him with a fierce surge of energy. Forcing him alert. And in this heightened state, Calvin couldn’t blink away the images. He hated them! The blood and wounds, the claw marks, and, worst of all, William’s empty eyes rolling back into their sockets. One last frozen expression on his face. Like a soul lost forever in a state of eternal stasis. What had meant everything to him yesterday suddenly meant nothing.

  And Christine. He could hear her whispers in his ears. Her laughter by his side. He reached over for her but found only the cold empty side of his bed.

  He wept silently and thought of death. It stared him in the face, and he felt his strength vanish as he imagined the blank dark mask of the reaper and his shimmering indiscriminate scythe. An enemy that can never be beaten no matter how much money, force, and strategy is deployed against it.

  The idea of such a final and hopeless conflict frightened him—consumed him. And, as he stumbled to his feet—legs trembling ever-so-slightly, barely keeping him balanced—he found the bottle of equarius and turned the lid, his shaking hands hardly able to open it.

  No matter what it cost him, no matter what effect it would have on him tomorrow, he needed peace of mind now. And to hell with everything else.

  Here’s to the dead. He chased down the pill with half a bottle of water.