Strange Academy (Hot Paranormal Romance) (42 page)
Brunnhilde grabbed the end of her weapon and pulled downward. Space carved open on the blade of the axe, and I saw a glimpse of light and movement that didn’t fit the Chicago cityscape.
Another dimension... or something. Maybe Valhalla? Was I seeing the secret of the universe—what happens to us after we die?
I got a little rush from knowing I could answer the question people had asked for thousands of years. And yet... I’d decided to stay here.
The chain connecting me to my corpse sparkled in the sunlight, clean and shiny. The paramedics hadn’t stopped; the redhead had stuck in an IV, and performing CPR had slicked the tattooed guy’s hands with red. But my body’s lips had turned a bloodless grey-blue.
Brunnhilde was right. I was dead. Now, I’d spend forever shackled to my lifeless body. The gold chain no longer felt like a lifeline—more like an anchor weighing me down.
Without warning, an intense pressure washed over me. I felt compressed, like an eardrum in a plane losing altitude fast.
I scanned the streets. Everywhere I saw sunshine and light, and people hustling back to the office. But a strange sensation slithered over me, like the build-up of background music in a scary movie just before the killer jumps out.
A noiseless rumble began somewhere underneath me, deep below the asphalt of the Chicago streets. The pressure intensified, squeezing me in a fist. I hugged myself, but I might as well have been hugging air.
A hot wind blew, seeming to swirl around me like a twister. I didn’t feel the heat on the skin I no longer had, but deep inside the core of my being. The intensity of the sensation made me tremble inside.
Three blocks down South Michigan, an incongruous green-bronze pebbled mountain oozed up from the ground. It superimposed itself over the street and the office blocks, as well as the cars being rerouted around my corpse.
The supernatural mountain flicked open. It wasn’t a mountain at all. It was a massive inhuman eye, copper and dark gold, with a slit black pupil as tall as me. What I'd though were pebbles was really the mottled olive skin of a lizardy eyelid.
Steadily, the eye steered closer, like an alligator under water stalking a hapless duck.
The air swirling around me turned into rush of wind blowing toward the eye, trying to draw me along.
I screamed like a horror movie heroine.
No one noticed. No one saw the eyeball but me—meaning the eyeball had shown up to look at me. I had no clue why, but as sure as I was dead, I did
not
want to that thing looking at me.
The small part of my mind not paralyzed with terror realized eyes are attached to mouths. Usually with teeth. I had to get out of there, even if it meant—gulp—Valhalla.
“Wait!” I yelled to Brunnhilde.
She didn’t hear. She pulled each side of the rip she’d made in reality, wrenching the hole open. I shouted again, with no more luck. She stepped halfway through the wormhole and her leg disappeared.
Something inside me, where my stomach used to be, tightened up. The eye closed in, covering a block in an instant. And I knew it would be unhealthy to stick around until it arrived. But the chain still shackled me to my body.
I tried to breathe deeply to steel myself for what I had to do. Then I remembered I didn’t have lungs anymore.
The back of Brunnhilde’s iron helmet ducked into the portal. My heart would have been tripping, if I’d had one. No way would I get to her in time unless I moved my butt. Probably not even then.
Trying not to think about the consequences of this bad, bad idea, I bent down, planted my foot on the golden chain and stood up as fast as I could.
It snapped so easily, my last tie to life on Earth. A few links tinkled toward the ground, but I didn’t have time to watch them fall. I took off at a run in the direction I’d last seen the Viking.
She’d disappeared, except for a gold braid hanging suspended in the air. Calling up everything I’d learned from Miss Wilson’s gym class in tenth grade—the last time I’d done anything athletic—I made a leap for the shank of hair slipping through the portal. My finger closed around the braid and held on for dear, er, life.
My entire being—I can’t call it my “body”—prickled as I flew away from everything I’d ever known, straight toward the Other Side.
Buy
Over my Dead Body
now.
Teresa Wilde wrote her first novel in twelfth grade—a craptastic plot-hole-ridden mystery she wrote after reading too much Agatha Christie.
She wrote her second novel in creative writing class in university. It was a YA about a bridesmaid. Everyone else in the group tried to write serial killer novels. She was the only one who finished the assignment. She got a 95.
After that, she forgot she was a writer for a while and remembered again later. Writing has taken her some amazing places, including Montréal, Ecuador and Regency England.
Strange Academy is her third first novel.
She's currently working on a Regency Urban Fantasy and a new sheikh story, as Teresa Morgan.
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More stories by Teresa Wilde, writing as Teresa Morgan
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Never before in his regimented, predictable life has Prince Zaqwan el Behar of Ittar been mistaken for a male escort. But when the intriguing blonde maid of honor at his friend's wedding offers him money for his sexual services, he can't help but play along. And the more he finds out about her, the more he begins to think that her pleasure is his business...
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What's a little seduction between friends?
Arya Mokri, the ultimate wallflower, has to stop dreaming of His Royal Highness, Sheikh Javad Shirin, or she's going to lose her mind. She's been crushing on him for months and it's time to move on. If he won't have her, she'll find someone who will...
A consummate diplomat, Sheikh Javad would never dream of sleeping with the woman whose friendship he values so much. But when she arrives at an event in a dress showing too much skin and even more poor judgment, he finds himself wondering what it would look like on his bedroom floor. Worse, his suddenly sexy friend plans an affair with his own brother.
Tonight, he vows, her plans will change. Whether she wants them to or not.
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Copyright 2012, Teresa Wilde
