Forged in Smoke (Red-Hot SEALs #3)(2)

Wake up. Damn it, time to wake up.

Kait, Cosky’s brand-new girlfriend, flew past Rawls, her braid flopping against her back and gleaming like wet gold beneath the opalescent shimmer of the moonlight. She dropped to her knees and spread her hands. “Which is the worst wound?”

“Chest,” Zane said, backing up to give her room.

“What the hell do they think they’re gonna do?” the man Rawls had known as Detective Pachico asked. “Bring you back from the dead?” He snorted out a laugh.

Cosky’s breath whistled out in a rush. “I got a pulse.”

Pachico laughed again. “Wishful thinking on your buddy’s part. If you had a pulse, you wouldn’t be all floaty beside me.”

A thick, static pressure swelled in Rawls’s head. He recognized the symptoms of shock—the mental fog, the dizzy floating sensation, the white haze shrouding his vision.

Except, if Pachico was right . . . if he really had died . . . he didn’t have eyes now, did he? Or a body? Or a life?

Wake up. He pinched his wrist again, grimacing when his fingers sank into his transparent arm. Stepping forward, he grabbed Zane’s shoulder, and his hand vanished. Zane didn’t even flinch. No reaction at all.

“You’re not sleeping, dumbass. You’re dead. As a doornail. Your buddies can’t see you, or hear you, or feel you. I should know. I’ve been trying to catch someone’s attention since you let me die in that damn kitchen.” Pachico paused and then his voice rose. “What the f*ck are they doing?” He stepped closer to the drama unfolding before them.

Rawls turned back to the nightmare playing out at his feet. Kait knelt on one side of his prone form, her palms pressed against the center of his chest. Cosky faced her, his hands covering hers. Frozen, they crouched there, staring down . . . waiting.

“Tryin’ to heal me.” Rawls twitched, startled by his hollow, disembodied voice.

“No f*ck.” Pachico laughed. “Good luck with that.”

There was precedent for such a healing. Kait had fixed Cosky’s knee after all, but then again—Cosky hadn’t been dead.

How did one go about healing the deceased?

He turned in a slow circle, surveying the silvery trees and shrubs surrounding him. The clearing stood pretty much the same—other than the moonlight, which might be a tad more ethereal since his death.

If he wasn’t dreaming, if he really had kicked the bucket, this didn’t resemble any of the near-death experiences his patients had recounted during his surgical residency. No bright light lurked in the distance. Peace and love were void from the air. Gram and Gramps, Ma and Pops, Uncle Andy and Aunt Ruth . . . Sarah . . . Hell—not one of them had come to fetch him into the afterlife.

Apparently they still hadn’t forgiven him for what had happened . . . which was fair. He hadn’t forgiven himself.

He frowned, his gaze falling on a crumpled figure in the distance. He hadn’t been the only one to die in this meadow. Where were the rest of the corporeally disenfranchised?

“Why didn’t your buddy over there”—he nodded at the motionless form—“go all Casper on us too?”

“How the hell should I know?” Pachico scowled at him before turning back to the drama taking place beneath the mammoth pine tree. “I wasn’t given a manual any more than you were.” He watched for a moment before leaning forward, his eyes widening. “What the f*ck! Do you see that? They’re glowing!”

Rawls simply nodded, too startled to speak. Kait and Cosky had lit up like a pair of bright white sparklers. A dense bubble of silver cocooned the pair, flowed out of their hands, and plunged into his chest, where it advanced in a glowing puddle until it infused every inch of his inert form. With each second, the light intensified, blurring the outline of his frame into a pulsing rectangle of platinum.

Within the radiance something took shape—a thick, wavering snakelike tentacle. It unfurled from the luminous pool like a cobra poised to strike, and hung in the air, shedding silver sparks.

What the freaky, unbelievable, hell?

Rawls leapt back when it suddenly flew at him, but he didn’t have time to evade the blow. As the appendage penetrated his chest, it delivered an electrical shock of such intensity it knocked him off his feet. Before he could scramble up, another static jolt hit him and then another, launching his incorporeal body into helpless, twitching spasms. A sharp prickle swept his body. As the current pooled in his head, a static buzz filled his ears.

And then suddenly he was moving. He dug his heels and hands into the earth, or tried to, but zap, another bolt of electricity lit him from within, and some immense, unseen force dragged him forward.

Zane loomed directly in front, and he braced for impact, except he cut through his LC’s legs like Casper through a wall. He was still adjusting to that when his boots pierced his lifeless torso, and he sank into his limp body like a stone into a well.

His head spun. A dense, crackling hum flooded his brain. Black pinpricks blinded him. A sharp sense of confinement struck, as though he’d stuffed himself into a suit several sizes too small. And then the pinpricks swelled, encircled him, drug him into a vortex of unforgiving black.




Rawls returned to consciousness in increments of scattered impressions and sluggish memories. The heavy thud of his heart deafened his ears . . . something hard and sharp, bordering on painful, dug into his spine . . . the thick sense of claustrophobia faded . . . the static charge consuming his chest shifted to a distinct burn.