Bone Chilling Quotes

Light coursed through Karou and darkness chased it-burning through her, chilling her, shimmer and shadow, ice and fire, blood and starlight, rushing, roaring, filling her.

It was the time of year, the time of day, for a small insistent sadness to pass into the texture of things. Dusk, silence, iron chill. Something lonely in the bone.

The dead are never exactly seen by the living, but many people seem acutely aware of something changed around them. They speak of a chill in the air. The mates of the deceased wake from dreams and see a figure standing at the end of thier bed, or in a doorway, or boarding, phantomlike, a city bus.

My own apathy is bone chilling.

She thought of Akiva, the night he had come to her at the river, the crushing pain and shame in his face, and love, still love - sorrow and love and hope - and she remembered the night of the Warlord's ball, how Akiva had always been the right to Thiago's wrong, the heat to the Wolf's chill, the safety to this monster's menace.

The cold buried deep inside the bones of her hands, her feet, her head, her back…everywhere. Viola felt old, chilled, and exflunctified. She brushed away her snow-white hair and with gnarled fingers tried tucking it under the black, lacy, silk nightcap that her great niece Annie had sewn for her. Each day, her clothes consisted of a long, white, embroidered nightgown, and a soft, warm, lavender sontag with the hair brooch secured upon her left shoulder. The few pleasures she had since she could no longer see were those of having mail or newspaper stories read to her by relatives who took turns caring for her. She could not tolerate people or activity. Food and drink were tasteless. Although the family made many attempts at a tray of concoctions for her each day, she had just quit eating. She remained closed in her bedroom in this dizzy age, propped in bed, eyes shut with her memories. “Who knew I would live this long?

I bask in their heatedness as before a woodstove. My own apathy is bone chilling.

Are you okay?" I sighed,my sodden coat chilling me to the bone. "Peachy.Made a new friend." He pulled me up by the hand,unzipping my coat and yanking it off me. "Shirt,too,please." "No!" "It's only fair. I seem to recall you making me strip the first time we met.

A sense of hopelessness had invaded his bones, as chill and as inescapable as the rain.

The rage of the Beast Lord was a terrible thing to behold. Some people stormed, some punched things, but Curran slipped into this icy, bone-chilling calm. His face hardened into a flat mask, and his eyes turned into a molten inferno of pure gold. If you looked at it for longer than two seconds, your muscles locked, your knees shook, and you had to fight to keep from cringing. It was easier to look at the floor, but I didn’t. Besides, he wasn’t angry with me. He wasn’t even angry with Kate. He was angry with Anapa. I had no doubt that if he could’ve gotten a hold of the god at that moment, he would’ve broken him in half. “It’s only ribs,” Kate told him. “And they’re not even broken. They are fractured.” “And the hip,” Doolittle said. “And the knee.” There you go. Don’t expect mercy from a honeybadger. “How long do you need to keep her?” Curran looked to Doolittle. “She can go to her quarters, provided she doesn’t leave them,” Doolittle said. “I can’t do anything else with the magic down. She must stay down until I can patch her up.” “She will.” Curran reached for Kate. “Hey, baby. Ready?” She nodded. Curran slid his hands under her and picked her up, gently, as if she weighed nothing. “Good?” he asked. She put her arm around him. “Never better.

...the pain of the constant, bone-chilling loneliness she'd accustomed herself to. And learned to live with it.

This is the thin time, when the beloved dead draw near. The world turns inward, and the chilling air grows thick with dreams and mystery.

What frightened me was the logic of the world; in it lay the foretaste of something incalculably powerful. Its mechanism was incomprehensible, and I could not possibly remain closeted in that windowless, bone-chilling room. Though outside lay the sea of irrationality, it was far more agreeable to swim in its waters until presently I drowned.

Walking with Murphy through the bone-freezing chill toward the bus stop, I start shivering. And somehow, when he slips his arm around me to warm me up, it feels right. Righter than anything ever has.

Once it builds up in the victim's system, a threshold is reached, the organs begin to fail, and the degeneration is irreversible. It's not a killer. It's a thief. It steals years. And he will never get them back." I felt a little chill at the satisfaction in her voice.

A novelist must wrestle with all mysteries and strangeness of life itself, and anyone who dies not wish to accept that grand, bone-chilling commission should write book reviews, editorials, or health-insurance policies instead.

Matt Murdock is blind -- so he misses the prettiest morning of the year. All he gets is hissing pipes and an East Coast chill that goes straight for the bones

Her eyes were full of hate. Full. And... at the same time, empty. Soulless. Like those horrible creatures she keeps around her. The dragon was frightening... but Maleficent, she was bone-chilling.

The chill, like scurrying spiders, worked deeper into him, weaving webs of ice in the hollows of his bones.

THE ULULATING HOWLS of the Iron Dogs floated behind us, constant now, like an eerie, bone-chilling din.

Minnesotans who bought scenic art usually avoided winter scenes. Hannah didn't find that surprising. Minnesota winters were long. Why would they want to buy a painting that would constantly remind them of the bone-chilling cold, the heavy snow that had to be shoveled, and the necessity of dressing up in survival gear to do nothing more than take out the garbage?

They have a complicated saying that likens snow to love." "It speaks of the beauty and the harshness, of watching a perfect flake land on bare skin and melt away in an instant. Of the soft powder giving way underfoot and the creeping chill of ice in your bones turning your lips blue and your fingertips black. Of terrible pain and delirious joy.

A hunter doesn't mistake the feeling that demons are around. It moves down your spine and chills your bones. Feeling it proved I was indeed a hunter, even without an element.

My bones are like cubes of ice clinking together, chilling me to my core.

There should have been a dark whisper in the wind. Or maybe a deep chill in the bone. Something. An ethereal song only Elizabeth or I could hear. A tightness in the air. Some textbook premonition. There are misfortunes we almost expect in life—what happened to my parents, for example—and then there are other dark moments, moments of sudden violence that alter everything. There was my life before the tragedy. There is my life now. The two have very little in common.

I try to explain in my own words, and I gesture to his chest. “It's in your bones; it's what keeps you alive. The foundation of your body. To suck out all the marrow of life... I think about how Thoreau went into the woods and stripped life to the barest necessities. To learn what life is really made of, the feeling of water slipping between fingers, the chilled glass in my hand, the wind that rustles your damn hair. And I think about how I feel these barest things every day with you. To live life at its most essential level so as to fully live.

I could not see the unholy creature, but I could feel the bone-aching chill of its presence, and I heard the howl of its mindless hate. I quailed to think of the power that had called it into being and loosed it on the world.

Do you ever think of her?' she asked. They were quiet again. All the time,' Ruth said. A chill ran down my spine. 'Sometimes I think she's lucky, you know. I hate this place.' Me too,' Ray said. 'But I've lived other places. This is just a temporary hell, not a permanent one.' You're not implying...' She's in heaven, if you believe in that stuff.' You don't?' I don't think so, no.' I do,' Ruth said. 'I don't mean la-la angel wing crap, but I do think there's a heaven.' Is she happy?' It is heaven, right?' But what does that mean?' The tea was stone-cold and the first bell had already rung. Ruth smiled into her cup. 'Well, as my dad would say, it means she's out of this shithole.' ~pgs 82-83

Her absence chills my bones numbs my nerves bares my soul In every cell of mine she lives And I only breathe to shelter her memories she left with me

The air was cold and wet, and if you stood still for a moment the chilling damp would creep into your bones. I could tell the temperature was taking a deep dive, and the bright sky of the morning was a fond memory. It was an appropriate day to dump a body.

I say, did you hear me?" The old man shook a worn walking stick at the oak. "I said move it and I meant it! I was sitting on that rock" -he pointed to a boulder- "enjoying the rising sun on my old bones when you had the nerve to cast a shadow over it and chill me! Move this instant. I say!" The tree did not respond. It also did not move. "I won't take any more of your insolence!" The old man began to beat on the tree with his stick. "Move or I'll - I'll -" "Someone shut that looney in a cage!" Fewmaster Toede shouted, galloping back from the front of the caravan. "Get your hands off me!" the old man shreiked at the draconians who ran up and accosted him. He beat on them feebly with his staff until they took it away from him. "Arrest the tree!" he insisted. "Obstructing sunlight! That's the charge!

His entire aspect was menacing, starting with his chilling eyes and the pronounced bone structure of his face. He was tall and lean, but the skin on his arms was stretched over muscles that looked as taut as whipcord. The backs of his hands were bumpy with strong veins. His clothes and hair had snagged natural debris—twigs, sprigs of moss, small leaves. He seemed indifferent to all that, just as he did to the mud caked on his boots and the legs of his jeans. He smelled of the swamp, of sweat, of danger.

As he spurred his horse, he had a sudden instant when he saw a hawk rising up toward the moon. The chill struck deep into his bones, and he knew he had seen his own fetch.

For men that are afraid to die Must warm their hands before a lie; The fire that's built of What is Known Will chill the marrow in the bone.

Love wasn’t an outfit you slipped in and out of when it suited you; it was your skin, your bones, your blood.

The night's frosty chill crept through the worn shutters, drawing another tremble from her. But she didn't light the fire in the hearth across the room. She could barely stand the crack and pop of the wood. Had barely been able to endure it in the town house. Snap; crunch. How no one ever remarked that it sounded like breaking bones, like a snapping neck, she had no idea.

Me" ( Notice Me) I was sent here on a journey that has no end. I hear you joke of going nowhere fast. Well, maybe life’s a joke and I’m the fool That dreams of being first but ends up last. Life’s a trial—a sentence I can’t escape. Confusion and desperation tear me down and turn to hate. There’s so much more to figure out, But it’s growing way too late. If I could answer half the questions in my mind, If I could find the place where I belong, If words were near as strong and deep as the wall of emotions I climb Then sorrow wouldn’t be so wrong. There’s no way to make you understand. An entire symphony could not play the broken notes in one child’s soul. That child screams and no one hears her, Until the tears have dried and now she’s just too old. I don’t want to hear the philosophies, the opinions, The remarks, the horrible reasonings. Words are to pad the mind and fight with the solitude of the heart. Still, silence chills to the bone and tears the soul apart. She never means to hurt or harm, only to belong. To find the truth ‘mid mortal lies, to sing her only song. But someday this race will end, and if she comes in last, I pray the first will look deeper than the others, smile, and then pass. "Copyright 1985

But dealing with situations like these, Sloane knew, was just a matter of knowing the right procedures. She had learned how to disappear after Cameron died and her mother burrowed into bed and never came out again. You dealt with it the same way you dealt with the cold when you didn't have the right jacket: you let the chill pass through you, digging deep into your bones, until you no longer feel it.

For I hadn’t stood frozen at the revelation of Geilie’s pregnancy. It was something else I had seen that chilled me to the marrow of my bones. As Geilie had spun, white arms stretched aloft, I saw what she had seen when my own clothes were stripped away. A mark on one arm like the one I bore. Here, in this time, the mark of sorcery, the mark of a magus. The small, homely scar of a smallpox vaccination.

His warmth was like a gift given and snatched away, and she stood there with her back to the window, feeling chilled, bereft, and undone. And angry. It was a childish, cartoonish anger- facing Akiva, she had wanted to beat her fists at his chest and then fall against him and feel his arms close around her.

And a soul would run by a living being, touch them softly on the shoulder or cheek, and continue on its way to heaven. The dead are never exactly seen by the living, but many people seem acutely aware of something changed around them. They speak of a chill in the air. The mates of the deceased wake from dreams and see a figure standing at the end of their bed, or in a doorway, or boarding, phantomlike, a city bus.

memories are the patches that make up the quilt of our emotions. A beautiful way to put it, but wrong. If that were true, then memories would blanket us, they would keep us warm. My memories were chilling me to the bone.

I paid the taxi driver, got out with my suitcase, surveyed my surroundings, and just as I was turning to ask the driver something or get back into the taxi and return forthwith to Chillán and then to Santiago, it sped off without warning, as if the somewhat ominous solitude of the place had unleashed atavistic fears in the driver's mind. For a moment I too was afraid. I must have been a sorry sight standing there helplessly with my suitcase from the seminary, holding a copy of Farewell's Anthology in one hand. Some birds flew out from behind a clump of trees. They seemed to be screaming the name of that forsaken village, Querquén, but they also seemed to be enquiring who: quién, quién, quién. I said a hasty prayer and headed for a wooden bench, there to recover a composure more in keeping with what I was, or what at the time I considered myself to be. Our Lady, do not abandon your servant, I murmured, while the black birds, about twenty-five centimetres in length, cried quién, quién, quién. Our Lady of Lourdes, do not abandon your poor priest, I murmured, while other birds, about ten centimetres long, brown in colour, or brownish, rather, with white breasts, called out, but not as loudly, quién, quién, quién, Our Lady of Suffering, Our Lady of Insight, Our Lady of Poetry, do not leave your devoted subject at the mercy of the elements, I murmured, while several tiny birds, magenta, black, fuchsia, yellow and blue in colour, wailed quién, quién, quién, at which point a cold wind sprang up suddenly, chilling me to the bone.

Ree sat chilled inside her squat tent. To occupy her mind, she decided to name all the Miltons: Thump, Blond, Catfish, Spider, Whoop, Rooster, Scrap… Lefty, Dog, Punch, Pinkeye, Momsy… Cotton, Hog-jaw, Ten Penny, Peashot…

When he leaves, I sit up and hug my legs tightly to my chest. My ripped clothing brings a chill to my bones and I shiver. I feel used and discarded at once, my light shrinking and wavering in the turbulent sea of wifehood.

...I see fetal sciences in you, mummified poems, and bones of my romantic secrets and old innocence. Shall I hang you on the wall of my emotional museum, beside the dark, chill, sleeping irises of my evil? Or shall I spread you over the pines ―suffering book of my love― so you can learn about the song the nightingale offers the dawn?...

At first, the woman thought she had snagged her leg on a rock or a piece of floating wood. There was no initial pain, only one violent tug on her right leg. She reached down to touch her foot, treading water with her left leg to keep her head up, feeling in the blackness with her left hand. She could not find her foot. She reached higher on her leg, and then she was overcome by a rush of nausea and dizziness. Her groping fingers had found a nub of bone and tattered flesh. She knew that the warm, pulsing flow over her fingers in the chill water was her own blood.

Russkie, promise me a simple thing?" Out of the blue when they had finished, after a mouthful from the mug. Dan seemed relaxed, leaning on his side. Resting back, savoring the taste, Vadim turned his head to look at Dan. Oh, that body. The effect it had on him, all the time, even when Dan wasn't there. Twelve months. "Promise what?" Sometimes, that kind of thing was about letters. Tell my girl I love her. Tell my mother I didn't suffer. Almost painful. Letters. Words that would hurt worse than the killing bullet. "Simple." Dan nodded, "if I'm unlucky, and if you find my body, will you bury it? Some rocks would do, I can't stand the thought of carrion's. As if that mattered, eh? I'd be fucking dead." Dan shrugged, tossed a grin towards the other, made light of an entirely far too heavy situation. He took the bottle once more, washing down the taste of death and decay, chasing away unbidden images. Vadim felt a shudder race over his skin. The thought of death chilled him to the bone, like a premonition. For a moment he saw himself stagger through enemy territory, looking for something that had been Dan. Minefields, snipers, fucking Hind hellfire. He might be able to track him. He might be able to guess where he had gone, where he had fallen. He had found the occasional pilot. But he had had help. Finding a dead man in a country full of dead people was more of a challenge. "I'll send you home," he murmured. Stay alive, he thought. Stay alive like you are now. I don't want to carry your rotting body to fucking Kabul and hand myself in to whatever bastard is your superior or handler there, but it must be Kabul. I can't hand myself over. But I will. Fuck you. He felt his face twitch, and turned away, breathing. "No, I have no home anymore." Dan's hand stopped Vadim from turning over fully. Fingers digging into the muscular thigh. "Not my brother's family. Nowhere to send the body to. Forget it." Grip tightening while he moved closer. Ignored the heat, the damned fan and its monotonous creaking, pressed his body behind the other. "You're as close to a fucking home as I get.

Mom frowned, and I wanted to give her a thumbs-up to let her know I was okay. All I could manage was raising my bound hands in her general direction, clocking Cal on the chin as I did so. "Sorry." "No problem. Must be weird for you, having your mom here." "Weird for me, weird for her, probably weird for you since you had to give up your swinging bachelor pad." "Mrs. Casnoff let me install my heart-shaped Jacuzzi in my new dorm room." "Cal," I said with mock astonishment, "did you just make a joke?" "Maybe," he replied. We'd reached the end of the pier. I looked down at the water and tried not to shudder. "I'll be pretending, of course, but do you have any advice on how I'm supposed to not drown?" I asked Cal. "Don't breathe in water." "Oh,thanks,that's super helpful." Cal shifted me in his arms, and I tensed. Just before he tossed me into the pond, he leaned in and whispered, "Good luck." And then I hit the water. I can't say what my first thought was as I sunk below the surface, because it was mostly a string of four-letter words. The water was way too cold for a pond in Georgia in May, and I could feel the chill sinking all the way into my bones. Plus my chest started burning almost immediately, and I sunk all the way to the bottom, landing in the slimy mud. Okay,Sophie,I thought. Don't panic. Then I glanced over to my right, and through the murky water, made out a skull grinning back at me. I panicked.

On this voyage, I couldn't help but think we need need. We need to be forced to go outside. We need to be forced to depend on one another. we need to be forced to sacrifice, to grow a garden, to fix a rood, to interact with neighbors. Nature has been all around me as a boy. It unleashed terrifying storms, spun circular cycles, inflicted bone-chilling, cold and renewed itself with springy revivifications. Yet I was completely oblivious to it all. I was playing video games.

After the bone-grinding cold of the lands beyond the Wall, the caves were blessedly warm, and when the chill crept out of the rock the singers would light fires to drive it off again. Down here there was no wind, no snow, no ice, no dead things reaching out to grab you, only dreams and rushlight and the kisses of the ravens. And the whisperer in darkness.

Aleks opened his mouth to reassure his friend when he heard something that chilled him to the bone. “Aleksander Aaron Arkadion! What in the hell is wrong with you! Why are you dragging that mangled corpse through town? You traumatized an entire first-grade class on a field trip to the town center,” Ma said, striding up to them pointing down to the body that Aleks still had a hold of. He looked down at the ankle he was holding. “Fuck my life.” Aleks looked behind his ma at the trail of blood heading back to the ice cream parlor. Liam laughed, his arms wrapped around his waist holding his sides.

Have you noticed how the boy looks at you?” Russell asked. Charles chortled. “For the love of God, how should he look at me?” “I’m serious. I’ve been noticing it for a while now. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.” Silence. Dorian held his breath, ears divided between the sounds in the undergrowth and the words that would follow. “What are you talking about?” Charles’s voice sounded lower and more sullen than before, as if the marquess were struggling to contain some type of uneasiness. Russell’s reply was bone-chilling: “He looks at you the way a woman would.

When crew and captain understand each other to the core, It takes a gale and more than a gale to put their ship ashore; For the one will do what the other commands, although they are chilled to the bone; And both together can live through weather that neither could face alone. KIPLING

A chill crept over Duiker. Even wheeled hospitals carried with them that pervasive atmosphere of fear, the sounds of defiance and the silence of surrender. Mortality’s many comforting layers had been stripped away, revealing wracked bones, a sudden comprehension of death that throbbed like an exposed nerve.

Autumn comes like a buyer of cloth, her long fingers touching, turning orange, yellow, brown. taking what she wants, stretching the bone taut air. Her skin crackles beneath our feet. I didn't think anyone wanted me, bruises pulled like a sweater around my neck. We talk in the pore tightening air, branches bare, about the girl buried in the chill of prewinter. We show each other our mutilated children in the guise of women as autumn plucks at our lips. Each color, blue, black, ochre popping like kisses on the rib lined flesh, the puberty soft things. And we muse how women keep bruises hidden beneath dead leaves.

He used to tell her... that it was because Russia had left a chill in his bones. Lola Plum believed it, only because sometimes he'd get a very distant and apathetic look around his eyes and he'd sting her with some harsh truth. Always he apologized for it, but she had never blamed him, only the cold of his Russian heritage.

We stand upon the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss—we grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink away from the danger. Unaccountably we remain... it is but a thought, although a fearful one, and one which chills the very marrow of our bones with the fierceness of the delight of its horror. It is merely the idea of what would be our sensations during the sweeping precipitancy of a fall from such a height... for this very cause do we now the most vividly desire it.

A kind of northing is what I wish to accomplish, a single-minded trek towards that place where any shutter left open to the zenith at night will record the wheeling of all the sky’s stars as a pattern of perfect, concentric circles. I seek a reduction, a shedding, a sloughing off. At the seashore you often see a shell, or fragment of a shell, that sharp sands and surf have thinned to a wisp. There is no way you can tell what kind of shell it had been, what creature it had housed; it could have been a whelk or a scallop, a cowrie, limpet, or conch. The animal is long since dissolved, and its blood spread and thinned in the general sea. All you hold in your hand is a cool shred of shell, an inch long, pared so thin that it passes a faint pink light. It is an essence, a smooth condensation of the air, a curve. I long for the North where unimpeded winds would hone me to such a pure slip of bone. But I’ll not go northing this year. I’ll stalk that floating pole and frigid air by waiting here. I wait on bridges; I wait, struck, on forest paths and meadow’s fringes, hilltops and banksides, day in and day out, and I receive a southing as a gift. The North washes down the mountains like a waterfall, like a tidal wave, and pours across the valley; it comes to me. It sweetens the persimmons and numbs the last of the crickets and hornets; it fans the flames of the forest maples, bows the meadow’s seeded grasses and pokes it chilling fingers under the leaf litter, thrusting the springtails and the earthworms deeper into the earth. The sun heaves to the south by day, and at night wild Orion emerges looming like the Specter over Dead Man Mountain. Something is already here, and more is coming.

I remembered… …how acrid heartbreak tastes. I remembered the walk to the edge of the reincarnation cycle--the chill of marble, my plumed breath, betrayal prizing apart my heart. I remembered fury enthralling me body and bone. I remembered light lapping over my eyes and my soul unraveling, fracturing into prisms of amethyst, lapis, topaz. I remembered a needling twinge of regret and the secret, terrible knowledge that somewhere in Naraka my abandonment would leave behind a chasm of obsidian threads--a chronic rift.

Faye tilted her head slightly. “When was your first kill?” Winston met her stare for a long while, then exhaled. “I was nineteen, fighting a war I probably shouldn’t have been fighting, but it’s not like I knew that at the time.” “Mm. Did you regret it?” Winston grinned, but she could see the dark edges to it. “What? You think I come from some tragic backstory, blondie? That I’m a broken little boy who kills to fill that hole inside of my chest where my soul used to be? Nah. This ain’t one of them stories. I can’t dance or roll my tongue, but I can kill people pretty good. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been good at and when I lay my head down at night, I sleep like a baby. I don’t see their faces. Never have. Probably never will.” A chill spilled through her. The matter-of-fact nature of his confession scared her more than almost anything else she’d ever heard him say.

That night, the Body consented to embrace you. You so nearly felt those long arms wrap around your neck, your middle. You were so close to feeling that press of graceful forehead to yours, the long, lean dead body chilling yours to the shivering point, as you all but perceived one cool corpse thigh touching yours from hip to knee. You had been nearly eight weeks in the Mithraeum. The sword that you bathed in your own arterial blood was sheathed in bone and heavy on your back. You no longer knew what it was like not to be afraid.

Silence itself seemed to flow from him like a dark tide, black and thick as ink. It chilled her bones.

Or was the chill I felt triggered by forces other than wind?

The Mother Of God The threefold terror of love; a fallen flare Through the hollow of an ear; Wings beating about the room; The terror of all terrors that I bore The Heavens in my womb. Had I not found content among the shows Every common woman knows, Chimney corner, garden walk, Or rocky cistern where we tread the clothes And gather all the talk? What is this flesh I purchased with my pains, This fallen star my milk sustains, This love that makes my heart's blood stop Or strikes a sudden chill into my bones And bids my hair stand up?

So instead of poverty, I’d write malnourishment or debility. As code for too many pregnancies, I might put anaemia, heart strain, bad back, brittle bones, varicose veins, low spirits, incontinence, fistula, torn cervix, or uterine prolapse. There was a saying I’d heard from several patients that struck a chill into my bones: She doesn’t love him unless she gives him twelve.

I long to reach out, to pull Death close, to feel it wind around my shoulders and tighten about my waist. I want its chill to cup my breasts, and stroke my throat. Death’s cold thrust will spread from my womb through my hips and into my bones. As it slips around the base of my skull and lies metallic on my tongue, I can finally let go. Then, and only then, will I be free to find Badgertail again.

Irrationality. I found the thought faintly pleasurable. Or rather, I felt at ease with it. What frightened me was the logic of the world; in it lay the foretaste of something incalculably powerful. Its mechanism was incomprehensible, and I could not possibly remain closeted in that windowless, bone-chilling room. Though outside lay the sea of irrationality, it was far more agreeable to swim in its waters until presently I drowned.

Irrationality. I found the thought faintly pleasurable. Or rather, I feel at ease with it. What frightened me was the logic of the world; in it lay the foretaste of something incalculably powerful. Its mechanism was incomprehensible, and I could not possibly remain closeted in that windowless, bone-chilling room. Though outside lay the sea of irrationality, it was far more agreeable to swim in its water until presently, I drowned.

Few things trigger old memories so quickly as authority figures from our youth. I’m not saying those memories are necessarily good ones; they’re simply old and tend to cast us back into roles we thought we grew out of long ago. Sometimes the memories are warm and blanket us like a mother’s love. More often, however, they have the sting of hoarfrost, which bites at first, then numbs and settles in the bones for a deep, extended chill.

There are moments on one's existence when you connect with another in a mere second, something sinks deep into your soul, planting a yearning that may never fade. A song that chills your bones and rattles the blood in your veins.

Stop asking!” Feng Xin cried. “You don’t understand! He’s not like us! He’s crazy! He… Toward you, he… He…” “‘Toward me,’ what?” Xie Lian demanded. “Please let me go. Let me go back and see for myself, all right?” One wanted to go back, but the other two were pulling him forward. They were stuck in that stalemate until suddenly, a bone-chilling voice came from ahead of them. “Didn’t I say not to randomly put your hands on things in other people’s territory?” The three of them froze, then slowly turned to look.

In real life I am a large, big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands. In the winter I wear flannel nightgowns to bed and overalls during the day. I can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man. My fat keeps me hot in zero weather. I can work outside all day, breaking ice to get water for washing; I can eat pork liver cooked over the open fire minutes after it comes steaming from the hog. One winter I knocked a bull calf straight in the brain between the eyes with a sledge hammer and had the meat hung up to chill before nightfall.

Jacob remembered it distinctly because it was his twenty-second birthday, and he was annoyed at being awakened by his uncle at 1:17 in the morning. But Avi had no time to be sentimental. He ordered Jacob to hightail it with him through a bone-chilling winter night to get to some safe house they’d never been to before and make it there by the top of the hour. Jacob had been hoping to sleep in a little and maybe eat a half-decent meal before sitting down to plan the sabotage of a radio tower near Antwerp, an operation scheduled for the coming weekend. But none of that was to be.

Do not fear the ghosts in this house; they are the least of your worries. Personally I find the noises they make reassuring. The creaks and footsteps in the night, their little tricks of hiding things, or moving them, I find endearing, not upsettling. It makes the place feel so much more like a home. Inhabited. Apart from ghosts nothing lives here for long. No cats no mice, no flies, no dreams, no bats. Two days ago I saw a butterfly, a monarch I believe, which danced from room to room and perched on walls and waited near to me. There are no flowers in this empty place, and, scared the butterfly would starve, I forced a window wide, cupped my two hands around her fluttering self, feeling her wings kiss my palms so gentle, and put her out, and watched her fly away. I've little patience with the seasons here, but your arrival eased this winter's chill. Please, wander round. Explore it all you wish. I've broken with tradition on some points. If there is one locked room here, you'll never know. You'll not find in the cellar's fireplace old bones or hair. You'll find no blood. Regard: just tools, a washing-machine, a drier, a water-heater, and a chain of keys. Nothing that can alarm you. Nothing dark. I may be grim, perhaps, but only just as grim as any man who suffered such affairs. Misfortune, carelessness or pain, what matters is the loss. You'll see the heartbreak linger in my eyes, and dream of making me forget what came before you walked into the hallway of this house. Bringing a little summer in your glance, and with your smile. While you are here, of course, you will hear the ghosts, always a room away, and you may wake beside me in the night, knowing that there's a space without a door, knowing that there's a place that's locked but isn't there. Hearing them scuffle, echo, thump and pound. If you are wise you'll run into the night, fluttering away into the cold, wearing perhaps the laciest of shifts. The lane's hard flints will cut your feet all bloody as you run, so, if I wished, I could just follow you, tasting the blood and oceans of your tears. I'll wait instead, here in my private place, and soon I'll put a candle in the window, love, to light your way back home. The world flutters like insects. I think this is how I shall remember you, my head between the white swell of your breasts, listening to the chambers of your heart.

Aleks opened his mouth to reassure his friend when he heard something that chilled him to the bone. “Aleksander Aaron Arkadion! What in the hell is wrong with you! Why are you dragging that mangled corpse through town? You traumatized an entire first-grade class on a field trip to the town center,” Ma said, striding up to them pointing down to the body that Aleks still had a hold of. He looked down at the ankle he was holding. “Fuck my life.” Aleks looked behind his ma at the trail of blood heading back to the ice cream parlor. Liam laughed, his arms wrapped around his waist holding his sides.

I was amazed, shocked, and sickened by what I heard throughout the day, over and over, by many victims' stories. I can think of no one with whom I didn't recognize a common thread. These monsters, these evil priests, used the same words and methods on all of us. With each session, I would find something that sent a cold chill down my spine. It amazed and frightened me that the actual words used on me, to rape me, to rape me, were the same as the words used on so many others from all over the United States. You would think that all these priests either were educated in how to concur and rape us, or they met privately with each other to compare notes and develop their plan of attack on us. The pattern was so much the same, with the same words, that you would swear it was scripted and disbursed to these priests. Do they secretly have closed-door meetings on how to abuse us? A chilling thought. Neary's routine of saying the “Our Father” during the rape and making me say it with him, repeating the “thy will be done” over and over, the absolution given me after he “finished,” the threats of having God take my parents away, the lectures about offering my suffering up to God, etc., etc., etc. My experience was identical, word-for-word, to that of many others. The exact words during the abuse were not just close, but exactly the same, as if it were some kind of abuse ritual. Ritual abuse is not limited to the religious definition and can include compulsive, abusive behavior performed in an exact series of steps with little variation. How could these similarities occur without the priests taking the same “abuse seminar” together some place, somehow? Was it taught in the seminary? In some dark corner? It goes beyond coincidence—the similarities in deeds and verbiage that these predators use on us. It truly chilled me to the very marrow of my bones.

Once inside, I stirred the banked coals of the brazier to sullen life. It did nothing to ease the chill that gripped my bones. Not only had my father as good as severed the sword-hand from my arm, he’d cut the heart out of my body. And then given it to the brother of the boy I loved. My father had betrayed me not once but twice.

Winter had stripped the garden and grounds to their bones. Dead grass crunched beneath Michael’s boots as he and Ada walked toward the ruin. Easy to see why Christmas would be necessary at this time of year. Warmth and green seemed like far memories. But the holiday could provide a welcome break from the relentless gray and chill.

Witch-sign, they said. Little eddies, like miniature storms breaking the surface of the ocean. Witch-signs rise up in great numbers, last a few minutes, and then disappear. When the whirlpools are gone, all that’s left is floating petals. Black sea roses. Anomalies. I’m not afraid. A queer chill settles into my bones, and I huddle, pulling my knees closer to my chest. What if Ilven’s death really did raise something up out of the waters? But those stories Nala is talking about—they’re just … fancies. There’s no real truth to them, they’re Hob tales. That’s what our House crake taught me. Of course, Ilven always did find the old stories fascinating and told me how she secretly wished that they were still real, that there was more to magic than just the scriv-forced power of the Houses. Oh Ilven. Bound now below the sea, caught in the kelp forests, nibbled at, her hair full of crabs and little ghost shrimp, a ghost herself. I choke on a sadness so sharp that it has sliced me in two.

You’ll get to watch her die. The last thing you’ll see before all that magic you spent puts you under will be my hands on her throat.” He was doing to Rogan exactly what he’d tried to do to Cornelius. No. You don’t. “I’ll break her. You’ll hear her bones snapping.” My teeth clicked from the cold. “Hurry up. We don’t have all day.” David’s eyes gleamed. “Ready to die?” “Matilda got your email,” I told him. “You sent a death threat to a little girl. You’re a piece of shit. Look at me. Look at my eyes. Do I look scared?” David blinked. “You’re a wart,” I told him. “You need to be removed. I’ll do it and three months from now nobody will remember your name.

Poor Tony had once had the hubris to fancy he’d had occasion really to shiver, ever, before. But he had never truly really shivered until time’s cadences—jagged and cold and smelling oddly of deodorant—entered his body via several openings, cold the way only damp cold is cold (the phrase he’d once had the gall to imagine he understood was the phrase “chilled to the bone”), shard-studded columns of chill entering to fill his bones with ground glass, and he could hear his joints’ glassy crunch with every slightest shift of his hunched position, time ambient and in the air and entering and exiting at will, very cold and slow; and the pain of his breath against his teeth.

His gaze never flickered down to it, their eyes locked on each other as he touched the skin with his index finger. A soft, barely-there touch. It seared her, from the point of his finger to her flesh, burning and not in a way that was painful. No. It was decadent, like the warmest of fires that seeped into her cold soul, kindling her chilled bones, warming her from the inside out.

He recalled those brief years when his song had fallen silent, his refusal to heed it leaving him bereft, without guidance. It had been hard to be so rudderless in a sea of chaos and war. This, however, was much worse, because now there was the chill, the bone-deep cold that had seeped into him in the Ally’s domain and lingered on here in this world of myriad paths, all seemingly so dark. And the words, of course, those words that hounded him from the Beyond. We will make an ending, you and I.

I do love Oregon." My gaze wanders over the quiet, natural beauty surrounding us, which isn't limited to just this garden. "Being near the river, and the ocean, and the rocky mountains, and all this nature ... the weather." He chuckles. "I've never met anyone who actually loves rain. It's kind of weird. But cool, too," he adds quickly, as if afraid to offend me. "I just don't get it." I shrug. "It's not so much that I love rain. I just have a healthy respect for what if does. People hate it, but the world needs rain. It washes away dirt, dilutes the toxins in the air, feeds drought. It keeps everything around us alive." "Well, I have a healthy respect for what the sun does," he counters with a smile." "I'd rather have the sun after a good, hard rainfall." He just shakes his head at me but he's smiling. "The good with the bad?" "Isn't that life?" He frowns. "Why do I sense a metaphor behind that?" "Maybe there is a metaphor behind that." One I can't very well explain to him without describing the kinds of things I see every day in my life. The underbelly of society - where twisted morals reign and predators lurk, preying on the lost, the broken, the weak, the innocent. Where a thirteen-year-old sells her body rather than live under the same roof as her abusive parents, where punks gang-rape a drunk girl and then post pictures of it all over the internet so the world can relive it with her. Where a junkie mom's drug addiction is readily fed while her children sit back and watch. Where a father is murdered bacause he made the mistake of wanting a van for his family. In that world, it seems like it's raining all the time. A cold, hard rain that seeps into clothes, chills bones, and makes people feel utterly wretched. Many times, I see people on the worst day of their lives, when they feel like they're drowing. I don't enjoy seeing people suffer. I just know that if they make good choices, and accept the right help, they'll come out of it all the stronger for it. What I do enjoy comes after. Three months later, when I see that thirteen-year-old former prostitute pushing a mower across the front lawn of her foster home, a quiet smile on her face. Eight months later, when I see the girl who was raped walking home from school with a guy who wants nothing from her but to make her laugh. Two years later, when I see the junkie mom clean and sober and loading a shopping cart for the kids that the State finally gave back to her. Those people have seen the sun again after the harshest rain, and they appreciate it so much more.

understanding. As they progressed west across the crater floor, they saw more gazelles and zebras and buffalo than she could count. She glassed the grasslands through the binoculars for a bottleneck of Land Rovers, hoping it would indicate a predator sighting. The strategy paid off. The first gathering led them to a chilled-out leopard lounging in the crotch of an acacia tree, the second to a pack of spotted hyenas making whooping-giggling noises while tearing apart the ribcage of an antelope with their bone-crushing jaws.

Yet when God entered time and became a man, he who was boundless became bound. Imprisoned in flesh. Restricted by weary-prone muscles and eyelids. For more than three decades, his once limitless reach would be limited to the stretch of an arm, his speed checked to the pace of human feet. I wonder, was he ever tempted to regain his boundlessness? In the middle of a long trip, did he ever consider transporting himself to the next city? When the rain chilled his bones, was he tempted to change the weather? When the heat parched his lips, did he give thought to popping over to the Caribbean for some refreshment? If he ever entertained such thoughts, he never gave into them. Not once. Stop and think about this. Not once did Christ use his supernatural powers for personal comfort. With one word, he could've transformed the hard earth into a soft bed, but he didn't. With a wave of his hands, he could've boomeranged the spit of his accusers back into their faces, but he didn't. With an arch of his brow, he could've paralyzed the hand of the soldier as he braided the crown of thorns. But he didn't.

We stand upon the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss—we grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger. Unaccountably we remain. By slow degrees our sickness and dizziness and horror become merged in a cloud of unnamable feeling. By gradations, still more imperceptible, this cloud assumes shape, as did the vapor from the bottle out of which arose the genius in the Arabian Nights. But out of this our cloud upon the precipice’s edge, there grows into palpability, a shape, far more terrible than any genius or any demon of a tale, and yet it is but a thought, although a fearful one, and one which chills the very marrow of our bones with the fierceness of the delight of its horror. It is merely the idea of what would be our sensations during the sweeping precipitancy of a fall from such a height. And this fall—this rushing annihilation—for the very reason that it involves that one most ghastly and loathsome of all the most ghastly and loathsome images of death and suffering which have ever presented themselves to our imagination—for this very cause do we now the most vividly desire it. And because our reason violently deters us from the brink, therefore do we the most impetuously approach it. There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him who, shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a Plunge. To indulge, for a moment, in any attempt at thought, is to be inevitably lost; for reflection but urges us to forbear, and therefore it is, I say, that we cannot. If there be no friendly arm to check us, or if we fail in a sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backward from the abyss, we plunge, and are destroyed.

No choice. No coincidence. Pah! We take this train on purpose." Fabbio waved his long arms dismissively. "And what about htis bump in the road?" Fabbio looked out the window. "I see no bump." Pumpkin let out a loud sigh. "'Bump in the road' is an expression." He was wearing a toga he'd found in an abandoned suitcase, tied with a curtain tie. He flounced one tassel around dramatically as he talked, smiling haughtily at Kitty from the corner of his eye. "It doesn't mean a real bump. It means-" Bump "Meay!" Somber Kitty, hissing, bounced against one of the closed windows, then landed on all fours. Pumpkin flew across the table under a cascade of dards; Beatrice and May hurtled off their bench onto the ground; Fabbio tumbled flat against the wall behind him. Scccccccccccccccrrrrrrrrrrrrrrcccccccccccccccchhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! The train came to a dead halt. A bone-chilling stillness followed. The Bogey. Pumpkin whimpered and zipped under the table. Somber Kitty positioned himself between May and the rear car door. And they all readied themselves for whatever might come through it.

Don’t you dare,” Azriel began—but not to Bryce. Dread paled his golden skin. “Nesta—” Something metallic gleamed like sunshine in Nesta’s hand. A mask. “Nesta,” Azriel warned, panic sharpening his voice, but too late. She closed her eyes and shoved it onto her face. A strange, cold breeze swept through the tunnel. Bryce had endured that wind before, in the Bone Quarter. A wind of death, of decay, of quiet. The hair on her arms rose. And her blood chilled to ice as Nesta opened her eyes to reveal only silver flame shining there. Whatever that mask was, whatever power it had … death lay within it. “Take it off,” Azriel snarled, but Nesta extended a hand into the darkness of the tunnel. Mortal, an ancient, bone-dry voice whispered in Bryce’s head. You are mortal, and you shall die. Memento mori. Memento mori, memento— Bone clicked in the darkness. The earth shook. Azriel grabbed Bryce, tugging her back against him as he retreated toward the wall, as if it’d offer any shelter from whatever approached. The Starsword and Truth-Teller hummed and pulled at Bryce’s spine, and her hands itched, like she could feel the weapons in her palms— She didn’t see what it was that Nesta drew from the dark before the Wyrm found them.

Muscles contract somewhere above the roof of my mouth, pumping venom into her bloodstream. Kelly cries out, a gasp of pain that turns suddenly to moans of euphoria as the carotids rush the narcotic serum directly to her brain. Her knees buckle, and I reach down to steady her — one arm over her breasts, the other around her waist as I hold her tightly to myself. Then the blood begins to flow, seeping out of the wounds I have made, and I put my lips to her skin and drink. There are no words adequate to describe it. My mind explodes with a wash of light and color, swirling and dancing before my eyes. Then the Sharing truly begins, and I can see inside her: images of her memories, her thoughts, her hopes and dreams, the way she remembers her past and how she imagines her future. Her joys; her grief; that which she loves and that she despises, what stirs her fire and chills her bones. And through it all, I feel the touch of her presence, and I know that she sees the same things inside of me. Blood is more than matter, more than plasma and hemoglobin. Blood is life, the river on which the spirit flows. And as Kelly's blood flows into me, it carries her life with it, until my soul entwines with hers. She has given a part of herself to me, and from this day forth we are bound to each other.

This sting is felt when God’s grace breaks into your life, like a sharp knife, cutting deep into motives and intentions (Heb. 4:12).16 Without this sting, we would never be compelled to confess our sins. We would be left in the condition of the legalist, who can only make excuses for his sin, but who cannot repent because he remains numb to his depravities.17 There are times when God willingly withholds his presence from us in order that we can feel the weight of our indwelling sin for ourselves.18 To feel sin for what it is, an offense against a holy God, is a bone-chilling sensation explained by no human cause, but only the “good work” of the Spirit.

Lhasa The sage blue sky awakens before the earth which slumbers a bit longer to still the chill of her bones and dream until the sun peeks hot through her cragged peaks bestirring weary monks to the swirl of their yak butter tea. Monks meditate upon this whorl which echoes the birth of galaxies, the twist of DNA, the curlicue of hair at the back of an infant’s head, eddying clockwise like Buddha’s journey, winding like a prayer wheel, in the resonance ofinterconnection. Bells tinkle, bowls sing, incense suffuses hints of heaven, rainbows of Jingfan prayer flags clap wildly in the wind, waving me to my quest, to surge forward, to trek to higher and higher ground -- to the rarefied air that is my mind.

Tibetan Dreams The sage blue sky awakens before the earth which slumbers a bit longer to still the chill of her bones and dream until the sun peeks hot through her cragged peaks bestirring weary monks to the swirl of their yak butter tea. Monks meditate upon this whorl which echoes the birth of galaxies, the twist of DNA, the curlicue of hair at the back of an infant’s head, eddying clockwise like Buddha’s journey, winding like a prayer wheel, in the resonance ofinterconnection. Bells tinkle, bowls sing, incense suffuses hints of heaven, rainbows of Jingfan prayer flags clap wildly in the wind, waving me to my quest, to surge forward, to trek to higher and higher ground -- to the rarefied air that is my mind.

That night, I took a while falling asleep and when I did, I had a strange dream. She was sitting in my rocking chair and rocking herself, her dead eyes fixed on me. I lay on my bed, paralysed with fear, unable to move, unable to scream, my limbs refusing to move to my command. The room was suddenly freezing cold, the heater had probably stopped working in the night because the electricity supply had been cut and the inverter too had run out. At one point, I was uncertain whether I was dreaming or awake, or in that strange space between dreaming and wakefulness, where the soul wanders out of the body and explores other dimensions. What I knew was that I was chilled to the bones, chilled in a way that made it impossible for me to move myself, to lever myself to a sitting position in order to switch the bedside lamp on and check whether this was really happening. I could hear her in my head. Her voice was faint, feathery, and sibilant, as if she was whispering through a curtain of rain. Her words were indistinct, she called my name, she said words that pierced through my ears, words that meshed into ice slivers in my brain and when I thought finally that I would freeze to death an ice cold tiny body climbed into the quilt with me, putting frigidly chilly arms around me, and whispered, ‘Mother, I’m cold.’ Icicles shot up my spine, and I sat up, bolt upright in my bed, feeling the covers fall from me and a small indent in the mattress where something had been, a moment ago. There was a sudden click, the red light of the heater lit up, the bed and blanket warmer began radiating life-giving heat again and I felt myself thaw out, emerge from the scary limbo which marks one’s descent into another dimension, and the shadow faded out from the rocking chair right in front of me into complete transparency and the icy presence in the bed faded away to nothingness.

Aboard the crowded ships, the men grew restless, and some began asking why their promised semiannual salary payment had not yet been made. They sent a petition to Sir James Houblon, asking that salaries be paid out to the sailors or their wives, as previously agreed. In response, Houblon told his agent to put several petitioners in irons and lock them in the ships’ dank brigs. Such reaction did not put the sailors’ minds at rest. While visiting other vessels in La Coruna’s sleepy harbor, some of the married sailors were able to send word back to their wives in England. A letter informed the women of their husbands’ plight and urged them to meet Houblon in person to demand the wages they no doubt needed to survive. The women then confronted Houblon, a wealthy merchant and founding deputy governor of the Bank of England, whose brother was chief governor of the Bank and would soon become Lord Mayor of London. His response chilled them to the bone. The ships and their men were now under the king of Spain’s control and as far as he was concerned the king could “pay them or hang them if he pleased.

Darkness: I had a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars Did wander darkling in the eternal space, Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air; Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day, And men forgot their passions in the dread Of this their desolation; and all hearts Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light: And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones, The palaces of crowned kings—the huts, The habitations of all things which dwell, Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum'd, And men were gather'd round their blazing homes To look once more into each other's face; Happy were those who dwelt within the eye Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch: A fearful hope was all the world contain'd; Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks Extinguish'd with a crash—and all was black. The brows of men by the despairing light Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits The flashes fell upon them; some lay down And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil'd; And others hurried to and fro, and fed Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up With mad disquietude on the dull sky, The pall of a past world; and then again With curses cast them down upon the dust, And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd And, terrified, did flutter on the ground, And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd And twin'd themselves among the multitude, Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food. And War, which for a moment was no more, Did glut himself again: a meal was bought With blood, and each sate sullenly apart Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left; All earth was but one thought—and that was death Immediate and inglorious; and the pang Of famine fed upon all entrails—men Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh; The meagre by the meagre were devour'd, Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one, And he was faithful to a corse, and kept The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay, Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead Lur'd their lank jaws; himself sought out no food, But with a piteous and perpetual moan, And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand Which answer'd not with a caress—he died. The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two Of an enormous city did survive, And they were enemies: they met beside The dying embers of an altar-place Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things For an unholy usage; they rak'd up, And shivering scrap'd with their cold skeleton hands The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath Blew for a little life, and made a flame Which was a mockery; then they lifted up Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld Each other's aspects—saw, and shriek'd, and died— Even of their mutual hideousness they died, Unknowing who he was upon whose brow Famine had written Fiend. The world was void, The populous and the powerful was a lump, Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless— A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay. The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still, And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths; Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea, And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd They slept on the abyss without a surge— The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave, The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before; The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air, And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need Of aid from them—She was the Universe.

Be warned, the ink you use is magical and your oath will be binding. If you carry falsehoods in your heart, the ink will know and it will signal us. The punishment for a false oath will be harsh, I assure you.” Haung paused to give the troops a hard stare and then he waved the first one forward, watching as the man approached the sorcerer's apprentice who stood behind the desk. The apprentice placed a pre-prepared sheet of paper in front of the man and handed him the brush pen. With a trembling hand, the man dipped the brush into the ink bowl and shakily signed his name. The ink stayed as ink and there was an audible sigh, echoed by the other recruits, from the man. Four more times this happened. When the fifth shaking and nervous man approached, he took the brush, dipped it into the ink and drew the character for his name. As he handed the brush back the ink on the page hissed and bubbled giving off an acrid blue smoke. Guards grabbed the man and dragged him, kicking, screaming and pleading his innocence into the dark room behind the desk. There was more shouted pleading and then a chilling, bone grating, scream erupted from the doorway followed by silence. The guards re-appeared, wiping their daggers with sword-cloth and replacing them in their belt scabbards.

At first it seemed to be no more than a chance ray of light beamed into the vestibule by the shifting of a tree-bough between house and street lamp, but as we kept our eyes glued to it we saw that it was a form - a tall, attenuated, skeletally-thin form moving stealthily in the shadow. Slowly the thing emerged from the gloom of the doorway, and despite the warning I had had, I felt a prickling sensation at the back of my neck just above my collar, and a feeling as of sudden chill ran through my forearms. It was tall, as we had been told, fully six feet from its bare-boned feet to hairless, parchment-covered skull; and the articulation of its skeleton could be seen plainly through the leathery skin that clung to the gaunt, staring bones. The nose was large, high-bridged and haughty, like the beak of a falcon or eagle, and the chin was prominent beneath the brownish sheath of skin that stretched drum-tight across it. The eyes were closed and showed only as twin depressions in the skull-like countenance, but the mummified lips had retracted to show a double line of teeth in a mirthless grin. Its movements were irregular and stiff, like the movements of some monstrous mechanical doll or, as Edina Laurace had expressed it, like a marionette worked by unseen wires. But once it had emerged from the doorway it moved with shocking quickness. Jerkily, and with exaggeratedly high knee-action, it crossed the lawn, came to the sidewalk, turned on its parchment-soled feet as if on a pivot, and started after de Grandin. ("The Man In Crescent Terrace")

His shining skin drew my attention and I became enslaved to the need to explore every inch of his flesh. His body brought on an ache in me I hadn't known for a long time. Since my ex had dumped me after I'd given him my virginity, I hadn't done more than fool around with guys. The desire to go further had never really risen again. Not until Orion. And I had never, in all my life, wanted anyone like I wanted him. His beard had been trimmed even shorter for the party, revealing the powerful cut of his jaw and that divine dimple in his cheek. He'd brought me here, alone, cordoning me off from the world. And the blazing intensity in his gaze made me hope that maybe he was about to drop the teacher act for one night and admit he was drawn to me too. He glanced above us and his brow furrowed heavily. “Up there are a thousand reasons why we can't be together.” I swallowed thickly, goosebumps rushing along my skin in response to his words. I pressed my back to the cool tiles of the pool and the goosebumps spread deeper, evoking a shiver across my body. “I'm bound by so many rules I could waste the rest of your evening telling you them,” he said. “Skip them then, sir.” A smile played around my mouth as a thrill danced in my chest. He moved closer and rested his hands either side of me on the wall. “I think the time for sirs and professors is over, don't you?” No answer came from my lips, but my body gave it to him as I reached out and did the one thing I'd dreamed about the most since this all-consuming crush had first started. I brushed my fingers across the stubble on his jaw, resting my thumb over the dimple in his cheek, feeling the tiny rivet in his skin. The distance parting us suddenly felt like too much; the air was racing over my exposed flesh, chilling me to the core. I needed the heat of his hands, the red hot press of his stomach and chest. “Lance,” I breathed and his pupils dilated as I met his gaze. He devoured the space between us and I experienced pure sin as his mouth crushed against mine. It was gunpowder meeting fire and the result was an all-consuming blaze which burned me up from the inside out. A desperate noise escaped me that would have made me blush if I’d had any scrap of self-awareness left. But that was all it took for him to slam into me full force, hitching my legs up around his waist so fast it made my head spin. My hands finally got their deepest wish and roamed down the plains of all that gloriously golden skin. But it wasn't enough just to feel the flex of his muscles, I needed more and I took it by scratching against his beautiful shell, wanting to break beneath flesh and bone and burrow my way deeper. I need more. (Darcy)