Read Blind the Stars (Rose of the Dawn Series Book 3) for Free Online Page A

eyes and moans. Then smiles.
    “It
smells great.” He picks up a piece of chicken that rests on a bed of
vegetables.
    “Where’d
you get those?” I point to the plate. It resembles my last meal in this house.
Before I went to the hospital.
    “Up
there.” She points to the house above.
    “How
come it hasn’t spoiled?” I’m confused. There was food in the fridge down here.
    “A
lot has been freeze-dried. This was one of those meals.” Dory goes back to the
kitchen and offers me a plate. I shake my head.
    “How
can you eat that for breakfast?” I ask. How can you eat anything? Hasn’t
everyone been given hunger suppressants?
    Dory
shrugs and takes her plate back to the couch. Pike wolfs down his food.
Finishing, he puts the plate on the armrest and rubs his belly. I haven’t
really seen him eat. He looks so content.
    Pike
gets up from the chair, returns his plate to the kitchen and goes to the back of
the cellar, toward the bathroom.
    I
watch my sister eat. Unlike Pike, she takes small bites. She uses her hands,
which I’d never seen her do. Every few bites she wipes her mouth. With her
sleeve.
    “Dory,
do any of these screens access the interweb? Or is it just this house and
surrounding property that we can see?”
    “Just
here.” She takes another bite of chicken, pulling the sinuous tendons away from
the bone with her teeth. She’s in a better mood now than before. “Nowhere
else.”
    I
get up and pace the living space.
    The
bathroom door opens with a billow of steam. A fan sucks it up into a vent and
just like that, it’s gone. Pike steps out. His hair is wet and he smells fresh.
Good. He always smells good.
    “It
looks like the first mega-storm and all satellite access would have been
denied. Cut off just like that. There’s no information coming in and there’s
nothing going out either. Where would your father go?” Pike asks. He must’ve
heard us talking. “If he left this place. Dory do you have another safe house
that you know of?”
    “Uh-uh.
Just this place that I know of,” she answers, still chewing.
    Dory
gasps and her plate falls to the floor. It hits the rug and bounces rather than
breaks. She runs to the door.
    “What
is it?” I ask, following her with my eyes. I’ve stopped pacing.
    Dory
opens the door and before we can stop her, it shuts and seals. I can’t hear
anything beyond this room. Not even the containment room just beyond.
    “Look
there., Pike points to the screens on the wall. They hum to life all around the
living room. Even the one in the kitchen has activated without anyone touching
it. Automatic.
    “Which
one?” I ask. They all show different points of view outside and I can’t tell
which one to focus on. I don’t know what I’m supposed to see.
    “Just
give it a second.” Pike’s patience persists and I move closer to the screen
above the sofa. It projects the front door.
    The
front door opens.
    “Dory!
Dory, what are you doing?” I yell at the screen.
    She
runs down the steps and across the lawn. A cloud passes overhead, darkening the
screen. A murder of crows, obviously agitated, takes flight in the wake of my
sister. Dory stops at the edge of the lawn and I follow her onto another
screen. I would move my legs to follow her, but they’re frozen. I’m riveted to
what I’m watching.
    “Pike,
what’s she doing?” I turn to him, my back to the screen, when I don’t get an
immediate answer.
    He’s
gone, too.
    The
door to the containment room is open beyond. I look at the screen and watch as
Pike emerges from the house. He stops at the top of the stairs.
    “Something’s
out there,” I state for no one. He moves down the steps toward my sister who is
still across the lawn. I look at the other screen and she sways. Physically
moves, back and forth. Back and forth.
    Pike
runs across the lawn, now, stopping beside my sister.
    “No!”
I scream. I have to get out there. Something’s out there. I can’t let something
happen to them. Then I’d