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Time slowed to a standstill except for a swirl of images spinning before his eyes like a twirling kaleidoscope. They were pictures of somewhere inside the hotel, one right after the other in a slideshow of stilted motion like a child’s flipbook. Grant didn’t understand exactly what he was looking at until he saw Huck standing on top of a ladder.

The ladder wobbled, and the support spreader on the left side snapped as Huck climbed down. He was about to fall as the ladder teetered sharply toward the stairs, and two monstrous hands surged out of the top step. One curled around the ladder to right it, and the other got Huck’s ankle. The action unbalanced Huck, and Grant closed his eyes.

He already knew how that story ended.

When Grant dared to open his eyes a few seconds later, he now saw Rebecca stumbling up the same stairs. She was wobbling as if heavily intoxicated, and there was a woman with her. Rebecca had lost her shoe and had gotten a splinter from walking barefoot, and she was angrily fussing at the woman to find her missing shoe. She said she wasn’t going anywhere until they found it, though the woman was clearly trying to hurry Rebecca along by roughly pulling on her arm.

The heel had been lost near the bottom of the staircase, and the same monstrous hands as before slithered out to snatch it up and drag it into the steps.

Despite her threat not to leave, Rebecca gave up the search and wandered off with the other woman, and Grant was struck by an overwhelming sense of despair that only confused him more.

Precipitation was next, wearing the stolen white wedding gown and arguing with a young woman at the top of the stairs. He was trying to get away from her and turned his back with a dismissive wave of his hand. She wrenched the big lion sculpture right off the post of the railing, and the Thing growled out a sharp warning.

Precipitation either didn’t hear it or chose to ignore it as the young woman came up right behind him without any trouble and then bashed him in the head with the sculpture.

More images came, so quickly now that Grant couldn’t make sense of them, and he certainly didn’t understand why the Thing was doing this right now. He recognized Mrs. Charles and watched her take a fall, knocking herself out cold, and then he saw the Thing banging its big fist against the wall until someone came to help. The rest were people he didn’t know, and soon the slideshow was going so fast that it was a blur.

If this was supposed to make Grant feel better about becoming a vessel, it sure as fuck was not helping.

Time was catching up and things were starting to move back at normal speeds, and Grant turned his head to see the Thing was only a few yards away and closing in fast. Grant pulled on the threads of energy he’d stolen away from Janice and pushed with everything he had at that singular spot where the thread was running through the haze.

“Grant…” a deep tone rumbled.

Oh, fuck.

The Thing had said his name.

“Come on, come on, come the fuck on!” Grant pleaded, pulling and pulling and ignoring the scalding burn lighting up his nerves as he drained Janice. He took more than he’d ever dared from any spirit, and he screamed as he nearly lost his grip from the unyielding pain seizing his fingers.

“Wait! No!” Janice shouted hysterically. “No! Stop it! Stop it right now!”

“Fuck you.” Grant grunted, and he watched her image flicker away like a skipping scene on a scratched DVD. He focused his power and the newly siphoned energy, and he swung his arms over his head—

Baus was right behind him and reaching for him with giant, clawed hands.

“Shit, shit,shit!” Grant brought the combined energy down with every ounce of strength he had, and the resulting collision against the surrounding fog sent him flying through the air. His ears were ringing, his vision whited out, and his spine lit up with a hot flash of agony as he slammed into something hard.

His knees were next, smacking into a smooth and equally unrelenting surface, and he managed to catch himself with his hands before his face hit anything. He blinked a few times to bring his vision back into focus, and he was very happy that he was out of the red haze.

Not so happy when he realized he was right next to the Eastern Stairs.

Though there was no immediate sign of Baus or whatever the Thing was called, Grant was not going to assume for a second that it was safe.

“Help!” Grant shouted at the top of his lungs. “Huck!Huck! Hey!” He felt sick when he didn’t get a reply, and he decided to try some of the living. “Finn! Cary! Anybody! Fucking help me! Help!” He tried to stand, but he had to catch himself against the wall when his legs buckled.

Janice was sprawled face down next to the bottom step of the staircase, and she growled almost as fiercely as the Thing had. “Ohhh! You! We are not done yet! Oh, no, no, no!”

“You fuck right off!” Grant pressed his hands against the wall, trying to focus on the spiritual hum that ran through the hotel and find Huck and the others. He was weak, and it was hard to concentrate…

“Grant!” Huck shouted. He sounded far away, but he had to have felt Grant trying to reach out for him. “I’m here, baby! I’m coming!”

Grant smiled and let himself collapse against the wall, relief washing over him. “Hurry. Please hurry, baby. Please, please, please.”

Huck popped out through the wall right beside him. “Hey! You’re here!”

Grant jerked, startled by the sudden appearance, but he was too happy to care. “Huck!”

“Oh, baby.” Huck grabbed Grant’s shoulders and kissed him hard, their energy surging up to meet one another’s with an intense urgency. “You’re here! You’re okay! Oh, baby. I was looking everywhere for—”

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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