Assimilation (Concordia Series Book 1) Read Online Free Page B

rooted to the spot.
    A whole new terror washes over me. Now I feel caught in a horror film, no longer the Lifetime movie but something out of the Twilight Zone.
    Sweat rolls down to tickle the small of my back.  My heart hammers against my chest like a gerbil in one of those clear plastic balls, as if it could pump with enough force to propel me forward.  Everything in me is screaming—Run! Now! Right now!—but I’ve come to my senses enough to remember Rae is still inside dry humping the strange college guy.  I can’t go tearing out of here without her.
    I look behind myself again to see if Jake is there. He isn’t.  I look ahead to the street light. Shadow Man is staring in my direction. He begins walking toward me, cautiously. It takes a second to register that he’s closing the gap between us.
    I lurch into gear. For every step he takes, I take a step backward. He stops, and I stop, not quite willing to turn my back on him. Definitely not willing to get any closer to the party house in case Jake is waiting for me there, I’m feeling the truth of that saying about rocks and hard places.
    My dad’s voice rings in my head, urging me to memorize what Shadow Man looks like.  He’s on the short side, for a guy. Maybe five foot, eight inches.  Dark hair, on the shaggier side of short.  He’s wearing jeans and a dark t-shirt now, and I can see he’s got some sort of tattoo on the inside of his left forearm. Even as close as I am, I can’t quite make it out.
    It can’t be. Something’s wrong. He can’t really be standing here, the same weird guy from this morning. Automatically, I start combat breathing. 
    This isn’t happening.
    Not happening.
    But it is .  Shadow Man is standing there watching me, backlit by the streetlight, looking right at me.  Intensely.  Like this morning across the street. Why?  Why is he watching me?  Why is he following me?
    The combat breathing isn’t working.  Probably because I am completely ignoring the four, four, four, four rhythm.  I stare back at him.  He doesn’t move.  I surely don’t, either.  Not for long seconds, anyway, until he begins advancing on me again.
    This time it seems safer to go back to the party, find Rae, and demand that we leave. An engine roars somewhere behind me. Shadow Man unfreezes.  I skitter back a few steps, stumbling off the curb. I turn to run back the other way as it registers that he’s rushing towards me.  The change in his expression when I risk a backward glance is baffling.  There is definitely alarm in his voice—“Hey!”—just before a bright flash of light and a blinding shock of pain swallows me whole.

 
     
    3
     
    I’M NOT GENERALLY given to panic when I wake up in a strange room.  When you move as often as I have, strange rooms are par for the course.  I’m lying on my back, slightly on my right hip.  The surface is soft, smooth under my fingers.  No linens.  I try to lift my head and a shock of pain races across my forehead and down behind my eyes.  Instead, I turn it to the left and shift so that I’m absolutely flat.
    This room is so impossibly strange—not a bedroom, very impersonal—that a little sizzle of fear races up my spine.  It’s quiet, with a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows to my left, and another just like it immediately ahead of me. It’s a greenish hue, the glass, letting light in but obscuring whatever lies beyond.  There are shadows moving on the other side that might be people passing by.
    Shadow Man.
    I really, really have to stop thinking that word, shadow .  It makes panic drop in my stomach like a swallowed ice cube.  My throat feels thick like it actually happened, like a ball of ice too big for it grudgingly slid down my wind pipe and thudded to a stop in my belly.  I ease back onto my right side.  Swinging into a sitting position does nothing for my head, which feels like it might crumble to dust like some ancient ruins. When I risk a glance down at myself, the