shadowrun 40 The Burning Time Read Online Free

bike’s motor was already humming as Talon swung one leg over and mounted up. He pulled on his helmet, and the electronics in its visor lit up the alleyway as bright as day. He revved the bike’s engine and headed into Landsdown Street. Within minutes, he was speeding toward South Boston, as if he could go fast enough to leave behind his troubling visions.

CHAPTER FOUR

    Alone in his bed later that night, Talon dreamed.
    He was sixteen again, having run away from the Catholic mission in Southie where he grew up. He’d run because of the things he was seeing and feeling, things that weren’t compatible with what the nuns and brothers of the mission taught him. He couldn’t block out the strange haloes of light he saw around people or prevent the bombardment by impressions of the emotions of everyone on the street. It was as if the pain, misery, and unhappiness of twenty generations of people had seeped into the concrete and brick of South Boston, permanently staining it and wrapping everything in a dark pall.
    He’d ended up in the Rox, which was even worse. The emotional fog there was so thick you could cut it with a knife. He was too poor to get a datajack even at one of the sleazy chop-shops operating in the back alleys, but he somehow managed to scrape together enough money to buy relief from his misery in the form of little blue tablets called bliss. Nothing else mattered when he was on bliss, but when he stopped, the sensations and the visions got harder and harder to block out.
    One day he was huddled in an abandoned building somewhere in the Rox, coming down off his last bliss high and with no money to buy more. It was only a matter of time before he’d be forced to sell his body on the street to get more. It was the only thing of any value he had left. The colors and feelings were already starting to come back, and he could feel his sanity starting to slip away. He didn’t know how much longer he could stand it.
    That was when he heard the faint scratching and shuffling sounds of something moving downstairs. He froze at the sound, holding his breath and straining to hear as his sweat turned ice cold. Everyone knew the stories about the ghouls that haunted the abandoned sections of the Rox looking for food. They were said to feed on human corpses, sometimes coming out of the shadows to hunt for fresh meat.
    He tried to reach for the switchblade in the pocket of his ragged jeans, but his fingers wouldn’t obey him properly. He couldn’t even get himself to crawl away and hide somewhere. All he could do was lie there, waiting for the inevitable, a small part of him thinking that maybe it would be best if the ghouls found him and put an end to it all. The shuffling drew closer and closer, with the creak of the old stairs heralding their approach.
    There were two of them, their gray and hairless flesh stretched tight over their bones. They wore the ragged remains of clothing, probably taken from the bodies of their victims. Their long, bony fingers were tipped with nails like sharp claws. Their faces were also long and gaunt, their thin-lipped mouths filled with sharp, tearing teeth. Their white, blind eyes looked out into nothing. They sniffed the air like animals, smelling Talon’s fear, the scent of prey. As they came closer, stalking him, Talon felt a whimper rise in his throat. One of the ghouls licked his lips with a grayish tongue.
    Then light spilled into the room, light even the blind ghouls could see somehow. They recoiled from it as a shining figure appeared, stepping straight through the wall as if it wasn’t there. The figure was tall and handsome, clad in robes of light and holding a long wooden staff in one hand. He raised the other in a gesture of warding and spoke in a voice like thunder.
    "STOP!" he commanded. "Leave him alone! He is under my protection."
    Talon looked up at the glowing figure and thought of the angels the nuns at the orphanage were always talking about. This being was so