Read Witch Doctor - Wiz in Rhyme-3 for Free Online

you think
    you're going to do anything to punish me for it, you'd better just stop talking and get to the thunder and lightning!" I braced myself, ready for annihilation, and found myself hoping that I'd been right about God, and that He was on my side after all.
    The angel looked unutterably sad as he studied me, then seemed to rally a little. "Nay. My power may not be spent 'gainst the living, and most especially not 'gainst the mortal who was placed in my care. I shall repel devils who seek to torment thee with all of my power, as I have in the past-but thy choices are thine own to make, by God's decree. And thou hast made them."
    I stood still, waiting for the adrenaline rush to wear off. The angel turned stern again. "Yet henceforth do not rail 'gainst Heaven for thy loneliness-for 'tis thou who hast chosen it." Suddenly the light exploded outward, enveloping him. It dwindled, rising and soaring upward, but faded out before it had gone very far. I just stood staring after it, feeling the stiffness ebb from my limbs, feeling the weakness begin, and letting myself realize that I had just seen my guardian angel.
    But I intended to go on griping all I wanted. I might have to accept loneliness as the price of freedom and integrity, but I didn't have to be happy about it.
    On the other hand, I wasn't accepting it, either. "You can have friends and still be yourself," I muttered to myself. "It's just that friends who like you the way you are, are few and far between." Which reminded me of Matt.
    I turned and started trudging uphill again. If I'd been transported into a different universe, maybe he had, too. Same different universe?
    I hauled up my sinking stomach. There was a good chance of it, wasn't there? After all, I'd been looking for him when that damned spider had bitten me and sent me into this world.
    How could a spider bite transport you between worlds?
    Death?
    Or hallucination. Which reminded me of the angel. Had to be a hallucination. Couldn't possibly have been anything else. The berries, I realized-they may have looked like ordinary raspberries, but they had probably contained a hallucinogen of some sort. They'd just opened up a channel for my subconscious to speak to me, in the form of my guardian angel.
    Which meant my subconscious was religious.
    I definitely didn't like that notion.
    I could almost hear it speaking. Sub to conscious. Come in, conscious.
    No. I refuse. I'll stay outside.
    And I would, too. Chapter Three
    As I walked, I tried to reason it out-after all, forty credits'
    worth of philosophy ought to be good for something, and if it wasn't any good in this situation, it never would be, anywhere. I resisted the personal, supernatural view of the local phonemena-angels weren't real, and neither was magic. Well, okay, something that sure looked a lot like magic was going on here-but magic wasn't a person, with emotions and a personality; magic could much more believably be just a force, a kind of energy, impersonal and ...
    My train of thought derailed as a flicker at the corner of my eye caught my attention. I glanced that way, but it had disappeared, of course. No, there it was again, like a glitch in my field of view. A wild stab of panic hit; this would be a very, very bad time to lose my vision! But it passed, with a little shove from my common senseand just in time, too, because the glitch widened, and I felt the impulse to reach out and adjust tracking. Silly, of course-because it not only widened, but swelled, turning into a zigzag tearing that reached downward to the ground and churned up a cloud of dust.
    Then the membranes in my nose stood on end, and wrung themselves dry as the stench hit them with a rotten egg. "Guardian angel," I muttered, "if you're anything more than an hallucination, now would be a great time to show yourself!"
    It didn't, of course-hallucinations don't usually come on demand. But I did feel a surprising surge of confidence, almost reassurance.
    Shouldn't have