Howler's Night Read Online Free

they came to get me.
    I got to twenty-three thousand, nine-hundred and fourteen before two men in white lab coats finally came.
    I didn’t fight them when they took me to the torture room. Or even when they strapped me down to the table.
    The doctor was back, and he wasn’t smiling anymore. “Close your eyes, Pandora. This is probably going to hurt. A lot.”
    I closed my eyes, and then something sharp and horrible stabbed straight through my heart, and I screamed as the fires of Hell consumed me, as the souls that’d been stripped from me were shoved back in. But not just Lust and Pestilence—there were more. So many more, and I couldn’t stop screaming…
    ~*~
    Asher

    This time when I floated above the Earth, I saw a band of black that glittered with a streak of gold deep in the heart of the Catskill Mountains, but my excitement was tempered by the knowledge that something was wrong with her colors.
    There was a slick, oily sheen to her that hadn’t been there before. Something dark and oppressive, something menacing, marred her, and I worried that whatever I’d find, it wouldn’t be Pandora at all.

Chapter 4
    Pandora

    I stared at the sky above me. I was dressed in a white dress. My feet were bare.
    I had no idea where I was. I’d woken up in a pile of dirt and leaves, with brambles pushing into my cheek. My muscles snapped and popped, and when I moved, I felt the cold steel of metal on my wrists.
    Lifting them up to my face, I stared wide-eyed at the manacles. My skin was bloody and bruised. Blinking, I tried to remember what was going on, what had happened to me.
    But as I sat there thinking, my heart began to race because something was very, very wrong. I felt it viscerally, deep in my soul.
    Biting my lip, I stared around at the empty forest, straining my ears to listen for any signs of life. I heard chirping, the song of crickets and insects… it was all so normal.
    So why did it feel like a mirage?
    I wet my lips as my pulse raced out of control.
    “Red rain. Red rain.” I moaned the nonsensical words over and over. I couldn’t understand why, but I felt that if I didn’t say the words I would burst.
    A squirrel scampered up a tree, and I screamed. I didn’t know why I’d screamed, but the scratching of its claws on wood and the brushing of its tail as it wrapped its little body up the trunk felt like torture. My ears were ringing, my head pounding, and my pulse thundering.
    Jumping to my feet, I knew I had to get away from there. Away from the ghosts that were clawing at my back, trying desperately to remind me of hazy, murky things I didn’t want to remember.
    I didn’t know where I was or why I was there…
    “Why are you here?” My voice sounded uneven and scratchy to my own ears. “Why are you here? Why? Why, Pa…paaa…” I trailed off and choked back a sob because I couldn’t even remember my name.
    I thought it started with a P. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe it started with a Y.
    “Oh, God, help me.” I covered my lips with cold fingertips, cast one last frantic look around the woods, and then I did what I’d wanted to do since the moment I’d opened my eyes.
    I ran.
    At first I headed east. It felt vital that I should somehow, but even as I thought it, I balked because there were two sides to me now. One didn’t seem to question why going east was so important, and another screamed at me not to listen to the compulsion and go west.
    That still voice grew progressively louder, and though I cringed when I did an about face, I followed the instinct that’d guided me for many lifetimes and headed west instead.
    I ran and ran and ran. Spots danced in my vision, and the call of the earth around me was ear-splittingly loud. The banging of a woodpecker sounded like an explosion. The sawing of my breath raced through my lungs like fire, my skin hurt, my skull throbbed, and every step I took was so much pain.
    I didn’t know how long I ran. But eventually I saw a break in the trees, and