Heir

Chapter 1

1

Where am I?

Disoriented, Adam tried to turn and take in his surroundings, but he wasn’t certain where he was. Not where he found himself in a geographic sense, but where he—whatever made him uniquely him—was. Adam wasn’t in his own body. In someone else’s? But he didn’t have a sense of seeing through someone else’s eyes, either; he just saw.

What did he see? It was dark, but not a void. He waited patiently for features to reveal themselves. Was he inside or outside? Both. Or neither. He smelled earth, damp stone and decomposition, and the lonely history of the world. He was drawn toward a charcoal grayness that was a cousin to light, and toward a small figure huddled within it. There was something else, something he recoiled from as he passed, but he couldn’t stop. He was pulled to something else. To someone else.

Her face was a pale glow in the darkness, close to the ground. Too close to be standing. She was kneeling, or sitting on her heels. She… who was she? He couldn’t speak to ask. Fear rolled from her like shock waves from an explosion. He could see the fear more clearly than he could see her. It pressed against him. More than a current—a tsunami in an ocean of fear.

He had a sense of movement, tiny ghost flashes—her hands? Why couldn’t Adam see her hands? One of the flashes went to her face, and her face disappeared. Unnerved, he struggled to get closer, to comprehend.

Until he could distinguish a hint of color, a subtly shaded difference in the dark.

Blood.

Her hands were bathed in blood, and now her face—where her hands touched—had disappeared beneath it.

No… no, no, no—

She opened her mouth and screamed.

And he screamed with her.

Evie…